C.3 Recommended Tools for Compilation

We recommend installing the following GNU tools before attempting to build the GNU C Library:

• GNU make 3.79 or newer

  You need the latest version of GNU make. Modifying the GNU C Library to work with other make programs would be so difficult that we recommend you port GNU make instead. Really. We recommend GNU make version 3.79. All earlier versions have severe bugs or lack features.

• GCC 4.9 or newer

  GCC 4.9 or higher is required. In general it is recommended to use the newest version of the compiler that is known to work for building the GNU C Library, as newer compilers usually produce better code. As of release time, GCC 7.3 is the newest compiler verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

  For PowerPC 64-bits little-endian (powerpc64le), GCC 6.2 or higher is required. This compiler version is the first to provide the features required for building the GNU C Library with support for _Float128.

  For multi-arch support it is recommended to use a GCC which has been built with support for GNU indirect functions. This ensures that correct debugging information is generated for functions selected by IFUNC resolvers. This support can either be enabled by configuring GCC with ‘--enable-gnu-indirect-function’, or by enabling it by default by setting ‘default_gnu_indirect_function’ variable for a particular architecture in the GCC source file gcc/config.gcc.

  You can use whatever compiler you like to compile programs that use the GNU C Library.

  Check the FAQ for any special compiler issues on particular platforms.

• GNU binutils 2.25 or later

  You must use GNU binutils (as and ld) to build the GNU C Library. No other assembler or linker has the necessary functionality at the moment. As of release time, GNU binutils 2.29.1 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GNU texinfo 4.7 or later

  To correctly translate and install the Texinfo documentation you need this version of the texinfo package. Earlier versions do not understand all the tags used in the document, and the installation mechanism for the info files is not present or works differently. As of release time, texinfo 6.5 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GNU awk 3.1.2, or higher

  awk is used in several places to generate files. Some gawk extensions are used, including the asorti function, which was introduced in version 3.1.2 of gawk. As of release time, gawk version 4.2.0 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GNU bison 2.7 or later

  bison is used to generate the yacc parser code in the intl subdirectory. As of release time, bison version 3.0.4 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• Perl 5

  Perl is not required, but it is used if present to test the installation. We may decide to use it elsewhere in the future.

• GNU sed 3.02 or newer

  Sed is used in several places to generate files. Most scripts work with any version of sed. As of release time, sed version 4.4 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

If you change any of the configure.ac files you will also need

• GNU autoconf 2.69 (exactly)

and if you change any of the message translation files you will need

• GNU gettext 0.10.36 or later

You may also need these packages if you upgrade your source tree using patches, although we try to avoid this.