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

Question

How do I install GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection) piece by piece, using the current version,
using the correct versions of dependencies, not using a package manager (like yum, rpm, apt, dpkg), and not using shared libraries?

Typical developers will likely want to install GCC the typical way, use your package manager (yum, rpm, apt, dpkg, port, brew, etc.) or follow the instructions here (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/InstallingGCC).

My question is how to install GCC piece by piece, without shared libraries.

• I want a fully-independent GCC that can be moved around my system without using any shared libraries, and without creating any shared libraries.
• This is what GCC calls "the difficult way" and it is not recommended for typical users.

GCC depends on:

• GMP: GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library
• MPFR: GNU Multiple-precision floating-point rounding library
• MPC: GNU Multiple-precision C library
• ELF: Executable and Linkable Format library
• PPL: Parma Polyhedra Library (optional, for memory optimizations)

Answer 1

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)