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Pre-built GNU8 cross-toolchain by Arm for the A-profile Architecture now available

Ashok Bhat
2 minute read time.

We are pleased to announce the first Arm's release of pre-built GNU cross-toolchain for the A-profile cores: GCC 8.2-2018.08. The GNU Toolchain for the Cortex-A family is a ready-to-use, open source suite of tools for C, C++ and Assembly programming targeting processors from the Arm Cortex-A family and implementing the Arm A-profile architecture. This is the similar toolchain that has been previously distributed by Linaro. Arm's GNU toolchain, like Linaro toolchains, has the advantage of being a supported release with the latest A-profile architecture features and enhancements. 

Arm to provide GNU-A cross-toolchain in addition to the Embedded toolchain

Arm already provides Arm GNU Embedded Toolchain supporting Cortex-R and Cortex-M profile cores. Now, Arm has taken over from Linaro the responsibility to release pre-built GNU cross-toolchain for A profile cores. Linaro will continue to provide GNU 7 and earlier cross-toolchains, while Arm will provide toolchains for GNU 8 and future versions. We have tried to ensure that migration from the Linaro toolchain is easy for end-users. We follow similar structure and content for the releases and we will continue to use Linaro's bug tracking system for Arm's releases. Arm engineers will provide community-level support for the released toolchains.

Arm's release will be based on GNU upstream releases (for e.g. the current release is based on GCC 8.2 and related projects). In addition, Arm will backport important features not yet available in upstream releases as well. 

GCC 8.2-2018.08 - GCC 8 based cross-toolchain

The toolchain release is based on GNU 8 with following details

  • All GCC 8.2 features. For details on GCC 8 release series, please refer to the list of changes, new features, and fixes.
  • Linaro specific pre-processor macros to ensure that this is a continuation from the Linaro releases.

Windows and Linux binaries for various targets

The release has windows binaries for the bare-metal targets (AArch32 and AArch64) and Linux 64-bit binaries for following targets

  • AArch32 bare-metal target.
  • AArch32 Linux/GNU target with soft float.
  • AArch32 Linux/GNU target with hard float.
  • AArch64 ELF bare-metal target.
  • AArch64 ELF bare-metal, big-endian target.
  • AArch64 Linux/GNU target.
  • AArch64 Linux/GNU big-endian target.

Support by Arm engineers

Arm engineers will provide community-level support for this release. For any questions, please use the Arm Community forums. Please report any bugs via the Linaro Bugzilla.

Get started 

Download the toolchain for free without the need of registration from Arm Developer website  and get started on Arm. We plan to provide the next GNU 8 based release for A-profile architecture in the first quarter of 2019, with bug fixes and other updates. You can learn more about the GNU toolchain below.

GNU Toolchain resources

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