How to install GCC piece by piece with GMP, MPFR, MPC, ELF, without shared libraries?

The Easy Way

If you're a typical developer, you can install the easy way, using instructions at http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/InstallingGCC or your system package manager such as:

apt  install gcc  # for Debian, Ubuntu, etc.
yum  install gcc  # for RedHat, CentOS, etc.
brew install gcc  # for Mac OS X

The Hard Way

GCC says the answer here is "the hard way" because it builds everything piece by piece, and does not use shared libraries.

GCC infrastructure

Get the GCC infrastructure:

ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/

Put downloads in a temp directory (you can use whatever directory you want).

/opt/downloads

Build the infrastructure in a temp directory that is different than the downloads directory or its subdirectories:

/tmp/gcc

Configure the infrastructure using static libraries like this:

./configure --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=/tmp/gcc

The --disable-shared flag may be worth a closer look depending on your needs. I use --disable-shared because I am building static code only, and I want to make sure that I don't build any shared code. My need is to move the resulting GCC around my drives easily, so I want all static code, and I do not want any shared code. If you prefer shared code, omit the --disable-shared flag.

Versions

When you run any of the commands in this answer, be sure to update the commands to use the current GCC version number that matches your needs. The commands in this answer are for GCC 4.6.2.

Note that the GCC documentation says: "While any sufficiently new version of required tools usually work, library requirements are generally stricter. Newer versions may work in some cases, but it's safer to use the exact versions documented."

GMP

GMP is the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library.

wget ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/gmp-4.3.2.tar.bz2
bunzip2 gmp-4.3.2.tar.bz2
tar xvf gmp-4.3.2.tar
cd gmp-4.3.2
./configure --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=/tmp/gcc
make && make check && make install

MPFR

MPFR is the GNU Multiple-precision floating-point rounding library. It depends on GMP.

wget ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/mpfr-2.4.2.tar.bz2
bunzip2 mpfr-2.4.2.tar.bz2
tar xvf mpfr-2.4.2.tar
cd mpfr-2.4.2
./configure --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=/tmp/gcc --with-gmp=/tmp/gcc
make && make check && make install

MPC

MPC is the GNU Multiple-precision C library. It depends on GMP and MPFR.

wget ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/mpc-0.8.1.tar.gz
tar zxvf mpc-0.8.1.tar.gz
cd mpc-0.8.1
./configure --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=/tmp/gcc --with-gmp=/tmp/gcc --with-mpfr=/tmp/gcc
make && make check && make install

ELF

ELF stands for Executable and Linkable Format. This library provides architecture-independent size and endian support.

wget http://www.mr511.de/software/libelf-0.8.13.tar.gz
tar zxvf libelf-0.8.13.tar.gz
cd libelf-0.8.13
./configure --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=/tmp/gcc
make && make check && make install

GCC

GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection. It depends on GMP, MPFR, MPC, and ELF.

wget http://www.netgull.com/gcc/releases/gcc-4.6.2/gcc-4.6.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf gcc-4.6.2.tar.gz

Build gcc in a scratch directory on the same mount point. (Building it within /tmp would trigger cross compile host issues)

mkdir -p /opt/downloads/gcc-4.6.2-scratch
cd /opt/downloads/gcc-4.6.2-scratch

The configure command and its flags must be all on one command line (this post shows them on separate lines just because of web page width).

Note: We use the full path to configure and do not set library path environment variables. We choose to disable bootstrap and disable shared libraries because we don't want them (typical users may want both), and to use posix threads and to flags that are defaults because we want them (typical users may want to use other threads or skip default flags). YMMV and read about the flags here

/opt/downloads/gcc-4.6.2/configure
  --disable-shared
  --disable-bootstrap
  --disable-libstdcxx-pch
  --enable-languages=all
  --enable-libgomp
  --enable-lto
  --enable-threads=posix
  --enable-tls
  --with-gmp=/tmp/gcc
  --with-mpfr=/tmp/gcc
  --with-mpc=/tmp/gcc
  --with-libelf=/tmp/gcc
  --with-fpmath=sse
make && make install

This page is great for GCC installation info, how to build it, various flags, and more:

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~charngda/cc_build.html

Updates

The ppl libraries can be used for memory optimizations: see bugseng.com/products/ppl/Download (Thanks Paul in comments)

You could run ./contrib/download_prerequisites from the gcc source directory. (Thanks to N7P on reddit)

The accepted answer makes it far more complicated than necessary and is not correct for all versions. Building GCC with --disable-shared is usually a very bad idea. See http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/InstallingGCC for an easier approach.

The entire process should be no more difficult than this (replacing 4.6.2 with the version you want to build):

tar xzf gcc-4.6.2.tar.gz
cd gcc-4.6.2
./contrib/download_prerequisites
cd ..
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
$PWD/../gcc-4.6.2/configure --prefix=$HOME/GCC-4.6.2 
make
make install

(But please read the link above anyway, it contains useful information.)

Apparently some people on Ubuntu have tons of crap set in their environment which interferes with the GCC build process, and they need to remove that first:

unset LIBRARY_PATH CPATH C_INCLUDE_PATH PKG_CONFIG_PATH CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH INCLUDE LD_LIBRARY_PATH

I work on a cluster. Only the master node is connected to the Internet. The software on nodes is outdated and generally not maintained. I don't have root access. I have two options:

• build static software I need (computational packages); or
• build static compilers.

I chose the second and built gcc, g++ and gfortran.

I built everything in

PREFIX=$HOME/cmp/soft/sft

and for make I used

THREADS=8

Below, gcc is built with

• GMP
• MPFR
• MPC
• ISL
• CLOOG

One can get the latest gcc from here: ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/releases

Dependencies are found here: ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure

Dependencies

I get dependencies with the following script:

#!/bin/sh

# ===========
## variables:

GMP=gmp-4.3.2.tar.bz2
MPFR=mpfr-2.4.2.tar.bz2
MPC=mpc-0.8.1.tar.gz
ISL=isl-0.12.2.tar.bz2
CLOOG=cloog-0.18.1.tar.gz

MIRROR=ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure


# ===========
## functions:

extract() {
    if [ -f $1 ]; then
        case $1 in
            *.tar.bz2)   tar xvjf $1    ;;
            *.tar.gz)    tar xvzf $1    ;;
            *.bz2)       bunzip2 $1     ;;
            *.rar)       unrar x $1     ;;
            *.gz)        gunzip $1      ;;
            *.tar)       tar xvf $1     ;;
            *.tbz2)      tar xvjf $1    ;;
            *.tgz)       tar xvzf $1    ;;
            *.zip)       unzip $1       ;;
            *.Z)         uncompress $1  ;;
            *.7z)        7z x $1        ;;
            *)           echo "I don't know how to extract '$1'..." ;;
        esac
    else
        echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"
    fi
}

# ======================
## download and extract:

wget $MIRROR/$GMP
extract $GMP

wget $MIRROR/$MPFR
extract $MPFR

wget $MIRROR/$MPC
extract $MPC

wget $MIRROR/$ISL
extract $ISL

wget $MIRROR/$CLOOG
extract $CLOOG

The following bash function is used below:

mkdircd () { mkdir -p "$@" && eval cd "\"\$$#\""; }

Each of the commands below is to be issued in the dir of the lib just downloaded.

GMP

mkdircd build
../configure --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=$PREFIX/gmp
make -j $THREADS && make check && make install

MPFR

mkdircd build
../configure --with-gmp=$PREFIX/gmp --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=$PREFIX/mpfr
make -j $THREADS && make install

MPC

mkdircd build
../configure --with-gmp=$PREFIX/gmp --with-mpfr=$PREFIX/mpfr --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=$PREFIX/mpc
make -j $THREADS && make install

ISL

mkdircd build
../configure --with-gmp-prefix=$PREFIX/gmp --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=$PREFIX/isl
make -j $THREADS && make install

CLOOG

mkdircd build
../configure --with-gmp-prefix=$PREFIX/gmp --with-isl-prefix=$PREFIX/isl --disable-shared --enable-static --prefix=$PREFIX/cloog
make -j $THREADS && make install

gcc

mkdircd build
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PREFIX/gmp/lib:$PREFIX/mpfr/lib:$PREFIX/mpc/lib:$PREFIX/isl/lib:$PREFIX/cloog/lib
export C_INCLUDE_PATH=$PREFIX/gmp/include:$PREFIX/mpfr/include:$PREFIX/mpc/include:$PREFIX/isl/include:$PREFIX/cloog/include
export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=$PREFIX/gmp/include:$PREFIX/mpfr/include:$PREFIX/mpc/include:$PREFIX/isl/include:$PREFIX/cloog/include
../configure --with-gmp=$PREFIX/gmp --with-mpfr=$PREFIX/mpfr --with-mpc=$PREFIX/mpc --with-isl=$PREFIX/isl --with-cloog=$PREFIX/cloog --disable-shared --enable-static --disable-multilib --prefix=$PREFIX/gcc --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran
make -j $THREADS bootstrap && make install

Used what Jonathan above has mentioned except that I had to download gmp and mpfr manually and create soft link (gcc 4.4.2 distribution probably does not have "download_prerequisites")

cd src/gcc-4.4.2
ln -s ~/linux64/gmp-4.2.1  gmp
ln -s ~/linux64/mpfr-2.3.0 mpfr

Btw, using "-with-gmp" and "with-mpfr" with "./configure" gave me "configure: error: cannot compute suffix of object files: cannot compile". Hence I downloaded the srcs of gmp and mpfr and then created the soft link to it from within gcc src top leve dir