3.1.2. Configuring binutils

All the GNU components build in a directory separate from the original source tree. A configure script is used from within this build directory to generate a make file suitable for the particular component.

The configure script has a huge number of parameters (try configure --help). Two are common to building the OpenRISC 1200 tool chain.

--target=architecture: The configuration has been extended to understand the OpenRISC 32 bit architecture if the --target option is set to or32-uclinux. The name of the target architecture was chosen, since the work was originally aimed at supporting uClinux.
--prefix=install: This specifies the directory in which all the components will be installed. The default (typically /usr/local) is not appropriate, since these are not tools for the workstation, but to cross-compile for the OpenRISC 1200 core. It is important that the same installation directory is used for all the components built. The examples here all use /opt/or32 as the install directory.

For example if the source code has been downloaded and patched in a sub-directory, binutils-2.16.1, then from the parent directory (i.e. the one containing binutils-2.16.1), the following commands would be appropriate.

mkdir builddir_binutils
cd builddir_binutils
../binutils-2.16.1/configure --target=or32-uclinux --prefix=/opt/or32