| Quick Installation Guide for musl libc | |
| ====================================== | |
| There are many different ways to install musl depending on your usage | |
| case. This document covers only the build and installation of musl by | |
| itself, which is useful for upgrading an existing musl-based system or | |
| compiler toolchain, or for using the provided musl-gcc wrapper with an | |
| existing non-musl-based compiler. | |
| Building complete native or cross-compiler toolchains is outside the | |
| scope of this INSTALL file. More information can be found on the musl | |
| website and community wiki. | |
| Build Prerequisites | |
| ------------------- | |
| The only build-time prerequisites for musl are GNU Make and a | |
| freestanding C99 compiler toolchain targeting the desired instruction | |
| set architecture and ABI, with support for a minimal subset of "GNU C" | |
| extensions consisting mainly of gcc-style inline assembly, weak | |
| aliases, hidden visibility, and stand-alone assembly source files. | |
| GCC, LLVM/clang, Firm/cparser, and PCC have all successfully built | |
| musl, but GCC is the most widely used/tested. Recent compiler (and | |
| binutils) versions should be used if possible since some older | |
| versions have bugs which affect musl. | |
| The system used to build musl does not need to be Linux-based, nor do | |
| the Linux kernel headers need to be available. | |
| Supported Targets | |
| ----------------- | |
| musl can be built for the following CPU instruction set architecture | |
| and ABI combinations: | |
| * i386 | |
| * Minimum CPU model is actually 80486 unless kernel emulation of | |
| the `cmpxchg` instruction is added | |
| * x86_64 | |
| * ILP32 ABI (x32) is available as a separate arch but is still | |
| experimental | |
| * ARM | |
| * EABI, standard or hard-float VFP variant | |
| * Little-endian default; big-endian variants also supported | |
| * Compiler toolchains only support armv4t and later | |
| * AArch64 | |
| * Little-endian default; big-endian variants also supported | |
| * MIPS | |
| * ABI is o32 | |
| * Big-endian default; little-endian variants also supported | |
| * Default ABI variant uses FPU registers; alternate soft-float ABI | |
| that does not use FPU registers or instructions is available | |
| * MIPS2 or later, or kernel emulation of ll/sc (standard in Linux) | |
| is required | |
| * MIPS64 | |
| * ABI is n64 (LP64) | |
| * Big-endian default; little-endian variants also supported | |
| * Default ABI variant uses FPU registers; alternate soft-float ABI | |
| that does not use FPU registers or instructions is available | |
| * PowerPC | |
| * Compiler toolchain must provide 64-bit long double, not IBM | |
| double-double or IEEE quad | |
| * For dynamic linking, compiler toolchain must be configured for | |
| "secure PLT" variant | |
| * PowerPC64 | |
| * Both little and big endian variants are supported | |
| * Compiler toolchain must provide 64-bit long double, not IBM | |
| double-double or IEEE quad | |
| * Compiler toolchain must use the new (ELFv2) ABI regardless of | |
| whether it is for little or big endian | |
| * S390X (64-bit S390) | |
| * SuperH (SH) | |
| * Standard ELF ABI or FDPIC ABI (shared-text without MMU) | |
| * Little-endian by default; big-engian variant also supported | |
| * Full FPU ABI or soft-float ABI is supported, but the | |
| single-precision-only FPU ABI is not | |
| * Microblaze | |
| * Big-endian default; little-endian variants also supported | |
| * Soft-float | |
| * Requires support for lwx/swx instructions | |
| * OpenRISC 1000 (or1k) | |
| Build and Installation Procedure | |
| -------------------------------- | |
| To build and install musl: | |
| 1. Run the provided configure script from the top-level source | |
| directory, passing on its command line any desired options. | |
| 2. Run "make" to compile. | |
| 3. Run "make install" with appropriate privileges to write to the | |
| target locations. | |
| The configure script attempts to determine automatically the correct | |
| target architecture based on the compiler being used. For some | |
| compilers, this may not be possible. If detection fails or selects the | |
| wrong architecture, you can provide an explicit selection on the | |
| configure command line. | |
| By default, configure installs to a prefix of "/usr/local/musl". This | |
| differs from the behavior of most configure scripts, and is chosen | |
| specifically to avoid clashing with libraries already present on the | |
| system. DO NOT set the prefix to "/usr", "/usr/local", or "/" unless | |
| you're upgrading libc on an existing musl-based system. Doing so will | |
| break your existing system when you run "make install" and it may be | |
| difficult to recover. | |
| Notes on Dynamic Linking | |
| ------------------------ | |
| If dynamic linking is enabled, one file needs to be installed outside | |
| of the installation prefix: /lib/ld-musl-$ARCH.so.1. This is the | |
| dynamic linker. Its pathname is hard-coded into all dynamic-linked | |
| programs, so for the sake of being able to share binaries between | |
| systems, a consistent location should be used everywhere. Note that | |
| the same applies to glibc and its dynamic linker, which is named | |
| /lib/ld-linux.so.2 on i386 systems. | |
| If for some reason it is impossible to install the dynamic linker in | |
| its standard location (for example, if you are installing without root | |
| privileges), the --syslibdir option to configure can be used to | |
| provide a different location | |
| At runtime, the dynamic linker needs to know the paths to search for | |
| shared libraries. You should create a text file named | |
| /etc/ld-musl-$ARCH.path (where $ARCH matches the architecture name | |
| used in the dynamic linker) containing a list of directories where you | |
| want the dynamic linker to search for shared libraries, separated by | |
| colons or newlines. If the dynamic linker has been installed in a | |
| non-default location, the path file also needs to reside at that | |
| location (../etc relative to the chosen syslibdir). | |
| If you do not intend to use dynamic linking, you may disable it by | |
| passing --disable-shared to configure; this also cuts the build time | |
| in half. | |
| Checking for Successful Installation | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| After installing, you should be able to use musl via the musl-gcc | |
| wrapper. For example: | |
| cat > hello.c <<EOF | |
| #include <stdio.h> | |
| int main() | |
| { | |
| printf("hello, world!\n"); | |
| return 0; | |
| } | |
| EOF | |
| /usr/local/musl/bin/musl-gcc hello.c | |
| ./a.out | |
| To configure autoconf-based program to compile and link against musl, | |
| set the CC variable to musl-gcc when running configure, as in: | |
| CC=musl-gcc ./configure ... | |
| You will probably also want to use --prefix when building libraries to | |
| ensure that they are installed under the musl prefix and not in the | |
| main host system library directories. |