HOWTO: Use Gentoo Distcc Host to cross-compile for OSX

xadium · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2004 Posts: 14 Location: UK

HOWTO: Use Gentoo Distcc Host to cross-compile for OSX

Pre-amble
Having recently discovered the wonders of distcc and seeing the recently announced release of OpenOffice.org for OSX I decided I'd look into using my Gentoo box to compile for my slightly underpowered G3 700Mhz iBook running OSX 10.3 Panther. Looking around the forums there were a number of posts for compiling for Linux on PPC and using distcc in that way but I couldn't find anything specifically to compile Mach-o Darwin binaries under Gentoo. Before I go any further I should say a huge thank you to Dara Hazeghi whose homepage can be found here - I emailed him regarding the instructions on his website which were instrumental in working out which tools I needed and the script that was used to create the toolchain. The credit is primarily his and any mistakes are more than likely mine! He kindly gave me permission to reproduce the steps I followed to build the cross compiler.

1. Creating the toolchain
There is an ebuild (crossdev) for creating toolchains for other architectures running Linux, as we're using a different architecture and a different OS this can't be used. Instead you'll need to equip yourself with some Darwin-specific stuff. You will need:

cctools - Apple's sourcecode for the assembler used in Darwin. The latest version of cctools at the time of writing is cctools-495 which can be downloaded from http://distfiles-msn.opendarwin.org/cctools-495.tar.bz2
Patches for cctools - developed by xwt.org and Dara which can be downloaded from http://i-x.ath.cx/gentoo/cctools.patch.bz2
macosx-include files - stripped down collection of header files to build cctools from http://i-x.ath.cx/gentoo/macosx-include.tar.bz2
gcc - the gnu c compiler! Download from http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/tarballs/other/gcc-1495.tar.gz
gcc patches - patches to ensure gcc builds courtesy of Dara - http://i-x.ath.cx/gentoo/gcc.patch.bz2
bison-1.2.8 it seems that it is necessary to use the same version of Bison that Apple do otherwise errors occur - ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-1.28.tar.gz
shortbuild.sh - Dara's script to automate the build process - http://i-x.ath.cx/gentoo/shortbuild.sh

Once you have everything downloaded into a directory you'll need to edit the top section of shortbuild.sh to suit you: SRCDIR is where you've placed the downloaded files, PREFIX is where we want the toolchain to end up and TARGET needs to reflect the system type of the target system.

NewBlackDak · Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 10:05 pm Post subject:

Kewl. I've been trying to setup my sun boxes to compile OS X code for awhile. They already compile x86 Linux, and PPC Linux code. I wasn't even thinking about Apple's cctools. I'll see if I can install it on sparc, and if it needs a patch or not.
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Hes Nikke · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2003 Posts: 14

if you can get this working with XCode and cocoa, i will personally kiss you! :lol:

(i hope apple make an announcement about cross platform build farms at WWDC!)

kare · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 3:42 pm Post subject:

Can you please tell me which version of gcc you used creating the toolchain.
I've tried to build it with no success on a gentoo box version 1.4.16.

servobf · Apprentice Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 160

I've got my 800MHz iBook running Gentoo, and my wife has a 1.25GHz iMac running OS 10.3.

I'd like to be able to also compile things for my gentoo box with the help of the iMac.

Is this possible? Dificult?

Thanks,
Michael

stonent · Veteran Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Posts: 1139 Location: Texas

What is $TOOLDIR supposed to be? It doesn't apear to be set in your script.

Edit: oops found it.
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stonent · Veteran Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Posts: 1139 Location: Texas

pvdabeel · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:09 pm Post subject:

The 2004.3 ppc universal livecd (not the mini) has a powerpc-apple-darwin cross compiler on board. The livecd is also distcc enabled.

The cross compiler can compile C, C++, objC and objC++ applications for the Mac OS X / Darwin platform.

Best regards,

Pieter Van den Abeele

assembler · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2005 Posts: 1

I get the following error as well, after trying to build on both Debian Woody (with GCC 2.95.4) and on Debian Sid (gcc (GCC) 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-5)).

uncleben · n00b Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 23

i get the same error when building. But this error is due to an error long before, there goes something wrong when doing gcc make all.

Can i use this toolchain to develop graphical OSX software.. for example with wxWidgets?
Cocoa is not possible?

line72 · Apprentice Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 212

I'm getting this same error. I also tried every different version of gcc on apple's site, and they all fail to build (with different errors). Has anyone been successful?

Immortal Q · Posted: Sat May 07, 2005 6:27 am Post subject:

I'd like to get this going with the current version of the toolchain (Tiger/Darwin

but I can't figure out where those include files came from in these instructions. I'll sniff around and see what I can find, in any case. Maybe the folks who put together the cross-compiler for the LiveCD can provide their methods, if they aren't too catalyst-specific? (I know nothing of catalyst, so forgive my ignorance)
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Oxidative · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2003 Posts: 33

Same problem here. Any news on this? I'd really prefere to build my code on my linux box instead of a slow pearpc emulation.

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syamajala · n00b Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 52

anyone get this to work with the new stuff from tiger? i haven't tried with gcc4 and the new cctools yet, but i would love to use this on my amd64 systems.