GCC toolchain for the Motorola 68000

This is a set of bash scripts for build gcc toolchain on unix environment for the Motorola 68000 family (m68k) was mainly used in SEGA Mega Drive, SEGA Mega CD, SNK NeoGeo, Atari ST, Amiga and older computers.

Build the toolchain

First, you need to install devel environment was come with your Linux distro for build the toolchain.

ArchLinux

$ sudo pacman -Syu
$ sudo pacman -S base-devel

Debian

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install build-essential texinfo

Ubuntu

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install build-essential texinfo

Fedora

$ sudo dnf update
$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
$ sudo dnf groupinstall "C Development Tools and Libraries"

After, going into your workspace where you want build the toolchain (for example ~/workspace/source) and clone this repository:

cd ~/workspace/source
git clone https://github.com/kentosama/m68k-elf-gcc.git
cd m68k-elf-gcc

Now, you can run build-toolchain.sh for start the build. The process should take approximately 15 min or several hours depending on your computer. Please, don't run this script as root!

$ ./build-toolchain.sh

For build the toolchain with the newlib, use --with-newlib argument:

$ ./build-toolchain.sh --with-newlib

For build the toolchain with other processors of the Motrola 68000 family, use --with-cpu argument:

$ ./build-toolchain.sh --with-cpu=68000,68030...

For change the program prefix, use --program-prefix argument:

$ ./build-toolchain.sh --program-prefix=sega-genesis-

By default the script currently builds

binutils 2.39 gcc 12.2.0 newlib 4.2.0.20211231 picolibc 1.7.9

For building the toolchain with different versions of newlib, picolibc, gcc and binutils specify e.g.:

$ BINUTILS_VERSION=2.25.1  GCC_VERSION=5.2.0 NEWLIB_VERSION=2.2.0.20151023 PICOLIBC_VERSION=1.7.9 ./build-toolchain.sh --with-newlib --with-picolibc --with-cpu=68000,68060

For the SHA checksum verification not to fail you also need to specify the binarys SHA sums with

BINUTILS_SHA512SUM, GCC_SHA512SUM, NEWLIB_SHA256SUM and PICOLIBC_SHA256SUM,

or specify to ignore the checksums with CHECKSUM_IGNORE=TRUE

$ BINUTILS_VERSION=2.25.1  GCC_VERSION=5.2.0 NEWLIB_VERSION=2.2.0.20151023 PICOLIBC_VERSION=1.7.9 CHECKSUM_IGNORE=TRUE ./build-toolchain.sh --with-newlib --with-picolibc --with-cpu=68000,68060

Pathes to be applied to binutils, gcc, newlib or picolibc an be specified with

BINUTILS_APPLY_PATCH, GCC_APPLY_PATCH, NEWLIB_APPLY_PATCH and PICOLIBC_PATCH

The patch specified here is searched for in the patch subdirectory.

E.g. to build gcc 5.2.0 with a gcc 6.3.0 the patch to apply is gcc5.2.0_libc_name_p.patch. Building gcc 5.2.0 with gcc 12.2.0 still fails and needs more patches.

$ BINUTILS_VERSION=2.25.1  GCC_VERSION=5.2.0 GCC_APPLY_PATCH=gcc6.4_to_gcc5.2.0.patch NEWLIB_VERSION=2.2.0.20151023 CHECKSUM_IGNORE=TRUE ./build-toolchain.sh --with-newlib --with-cpu=68000,68060

Building gcc 5.2.0 with gcc 12.2.0 still fails and needs more changes to the gcc 5.2 sources. There is another patch provided wich allows building gcc 5.2 with a current gcc 12.2. This patch fixes:

• libc_name_p definition
• multiple template definitions in wide-int.h
• x_spill_indirect_levels boolean increment which does no longer work with stdc++17 and breaks compiling whith a recent gcc

$ BINUTILS_VERSION=2.25.1  GCC_VERSION=5.2.0 GCC_APPLY_PATCH=gcc12.2_to_gcc5.2.0.patch NEWLIB_VERSION=2.2.0.20151023 CHECKSUM_IGNORE=TRUE ./build-toolchain.sh --with-newlib --with-cpu=68000,68060

The version of this script originally forked from https://github.com/kentosama/m68k-elf-gcc which build gcc 6.3.0 can be run with:

$ BINUTILS_VERSION=2.34 GCC_VERSION=6.3.0 GCC_APPLY_PATCH=ubsan-fix-check-empty-string.patch NEWLIB_VERSION=3.3.0 CHECKSUM_IGNORE=TRUE ./build-toolchain.sh --with-newlib --with-cpu=68000,68060

The file target_versions.txt lists versions of utils and patches which have been successfully tested.

Install

Once the Motorola 68000 toolchain was successful built, you can process to the installation. Move or copy the "m68k-toolchain" folder in "/opt" or "/usr/local":

$ sudo cp -R m68k-toolchain /opt

If you want, add the Motorola 68000 toolchain to your path environment:

$ echo export PATH="${PATH}:/opt/m68k-toolchain/bin" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bash_profile

Finally, check that m68k-elf-gcc is working properly:

$ m68k-elf-gcc -v

The result should display something like this:

Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=./m68k-elf-gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/home/kentosama/Workspace/m68-elf-gcc/m68k-toolchain/libexec/gcc/m68k-elf/6.3.0/lto-wrapper
Target: m68k-elf
Configured with: ../../source/gcc-6.3.0/configure --prefix=/home/kentosama/Workspace/m68-elf-gcc/m68k-toolchain --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --target=m68k-elf --program-prefix=m68k-elf- --enable-languages=c --enable-obsolete --enable-lto --disable-threads --disable-libmudflap --disable-libgomp --disable-nls --disable-werror --disable-libssp --disable-shared --disable-multilib --disable-libgcj --disable-libstdcxx --disable-gcov --without-headers --without-included-gettext --with-cpu=m68000
Thread model: single
gcc version 6.3.0 (GCC) 

For backup, you can store the Motorola 68000 toolchain in external drive:

$ tar -Jcvf sh2-gcc-6.3.0-toolchain.tar.xz m68k-toolchain
$ mv m68k-gcc-6.3.0-toolchain.tar.xz /storage/toolchains/