Help configuring gcc

[David Daney]

Luke Dickens wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I apologise in advance if this is the wrong place to ask this question, 
> but I couldn't find any suitable forums.
> 

This is the place.

> I am trying to fathom the installation procedure for gcc-core and 
> gcc-g++ on Windows XP and I think I must be missing something. So far I 
> have done the following:
> 
> - I have installed a programme called MSyS onto my machine. Which seems 
> to give me a posix style command line that I can run. I have installed 
> this in C:Program Files\msys.
> - I then installed a programme called MingW32, which I believe to be a 
> c-compiler in binary form. Now as I understand things gcc is itself a 
> c-compiler, so I don't really understand why this step is needed. If 
> someone can compile a c-compiler elsewhere (MingW32) then why can't they 
> compile gcc in the same way, or am I missing something. Anyway, for 
> reasons I can no longer remember I installed MingW32 in a subdirectory 
> of the msys folder, i.e. C:Program Files\msys\1.0\mingw, I no longer 
> know whether this was accidental or intentional.
> - I then downloaded the gcc-core.tar.bz2 and gcc-g++.tar.bz2 and copied 
> these into my home directory under msys, so C:Program 
> Files\msys\1.0\home\Luke in windows parlance, but this appears as 
> /home/Luke or simply ~ in msys command line.
> - I unzipped them both into a gcc-4.2.0 folder, and then created a 
> subdirectory srcdir and moved all the unzipped files and folders into 
> this directory. Then made another directory objdir. So my home directory 
> now looks like this
> 
> /home/Luke/gcc-4.2.0
>                      |---------- srcdir
>                      |                    |-------- ...
>                      |                    \-------- <all the other 
> files/folders from the tarballs>
>                      |
>                      \---------- objdir
> 
> 
> - Then I try to run configure and I get the following error:
> Luke@GODEL ~/gcc-4.2.0/srcdir
> $ cd ../objdir/
> 
> Luke@GODEL ~/gcc-4.2.0/objdir
> $ ../srcdir/configure  loading cache ./config.cache
> checking host system type... i686-pc-mingw32
> checking target system type... i686-pc-mingw32
> checking build system type... i686-pc-mingw32
> checking for a BSD compatible install... /bin/install -c
> checking whether ln works... yes
> checking whether ln -s works... no
> checking for gcc... no
> checking for cc... no
> configure: error: no acceptable cc found in $PATH
> 
> Now I understand what this is telling me. It is telling me that there is 
> no binary  file called gcc or cc which can be used, because the path 
> doesn't point towards any folder that contains such a binary. But the 
> reason I am doing all this is to get a gcc compiler. It is all very 
> confusing and I would greatly appreciate any help/advice on the issue. I 
> have looked for a suitable gcc file under mingw32 but this didn't seem 
> to come with one.
> 

I am not a mingw expert, but what you are doing looks reasonable.

GCC is written in the C programming language.  In order to build it you 
need a C compiler.  It presents a chicken-and-egg problem if you don't 
already have a suitable compiler.

I would search for pre-built GCC images for your system, and install one 
of those.  After you have a working GCC, you can build new versions with 
that.

David Daney.