-==== Installing musl ====
+Quick Installation Guide for musl libc
+======================================
-musl may be installed either as an alternate C library alongside the
-existing libraries on a system, or as the primary C library for a new
-or existing musl-based system.
+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.
-This document covers the prerequisites and procedures for compiling
-and installation.
+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 ====
+Build Prerequisites
+-------------------
The only build-time prerequisites for musl are GNU Make and a
freestanding C99 compiler toolchain targeting the desired instruction
work, but may be subject to minor floating point conformance issues on
i386 targets. Sufficiently recent versions of PCC and LLVM/clang are
also believed to work, but have not been tested as heavily; prior to
-Fall 2012, both had known bugs that affected musl.
+Fall 2012, both had known bugs that affected musl. Firm/cparser is
+also believed to work but lacks support for producing shared
+libraries.
-=== Supported Targets ====
+Supported Targets
+-----------------
musl can be built for the following CPU instruction set architecture
and ABI combinations:
-- i386 (requires 387 math and 486 cmpxchg instructions)
-- x86_64
-- arm (EABI)
-- mips (o32 ABI, requires fpu or float emulation in kernel)
-- microblaze (requires a cpu with lwx/swx instructions)
-- powerpc (32-bit, must use "secure plt" mode for dynamic linking)
+* i386
+ * Minimum CPU model is actually 80486 unless kernel emulation of
+ the `cmpxchg` instruction is added
+
+* x86_64
+
+* ARM
+ * EABI, standard or hard-float VFP variant
+ * Little-endian default; big-endian variants also supported
+ * Compiler toolchains only support armv4t and later
+
+* 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
+
+* PowerPC
+ * Only 32-bit is supported
+ * 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
+
+* Microblaze
+ * Big-endian default; little-endian variants also supported
+ * Soft-float
+ * Requires support for lwx/swx instructions
+
+The following additional targets are available for build, but may not
+work correctly and may not yet have ABI stability:
+
+* SuperH (SH)
+ * 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 supported (musl always
+ requires IEEE single and double to be supported)
+
+* x32 (x86_64 ILP32 ABI)
-For architectures with both little- and big-endian options, both are
-supported unless otherwise noted.
-In general, musl assumes the availability of all Linux syscall
-interfaces available in Linux 2.6.0. Some programs that do not use
-threads or other modern functionality may be able to run on 2.4.x
-kernels. Other kernels (such as BSD) that provide a Linux-compatible
-syscall ABI should also work but have not been extensively tested.
+Build and Installation Procedure
+--------------------------------
+To build and install musl:
-==== Option 1: Installing musl as an alternate C library ====
+1. Run the provided configure script from the top-level source
+ directory, passing on its command line any desired options.
-In this setup, musl and any third-party libraries linked to musl will
-reside under an alternate prefix such as /usr/local/musl or /opt/musl.
-A wrapper script for gcc, called musl-gcc, can be used in place of gcc
-to compile and link programs and libraries against musl.
+2. Run "make" to compile.
-(Note: There are not yet corresponding wrapper scripts for other
-compilers, so if you wish to compile and link against musl using
-another compiler, you are responsible for providing the correct
-options to override the default include and library search paths.)
+3. Run "make install" with appropriate privileges to write to the
+ target locations.
-To install musl as an alternate libc, follow these steps:
+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.
-1. Configure musl's build with a command similar to:
- ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/musl --exec-prefix=/usr/local
- Refer to ./configure --help for details on other options. You may
- change the install prefix if you like, but DO NOT set it to a
- location that contains your existing libraries based on another
- libc such as glibc or uClibc. If you do not intend to use dynamic
- linking, you may disable it at this point via --disable-shared and
- cut the build time in half. If you wish to use dynamic linking but
- do not have permissions to write to /lib, you will need to set an
- alternate dynamic linker location via --syslibdir.
+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.
-2. Run "make". Parallel build is fully supported, so you can instead
- use "make -j3" or so on SMP systems if you like.
-3. Run "make install" as a user sufficient privileges to write to the
- destination.
-4. Create a file named /etc/ld-musl-$ARCH.path (where $ARCH is
- replaced by i386, x86_64, etc. as appropriate) containing the
- correct colon-delimited search path for where you intend to install
- musl-linked shared library files. If this file is missing, musl
- will search the standard path, and you will encounter problems when
- it attempts to load libraries linked against your host libc. Note
- that this step can be skipped if you disabled dynamic linking.
+Notes on Dynamic Linking
+------------------------
-After installing, you can use musl via the musl-gcc wrapper. For
-example:
+If dynamic linking is enabled, one file needs to be installed outside
+of the installation prefix: /lib/ld-musl-$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>
return 0;
}
EOF
-musl-gcc hello.c
+/usr/local/musl/bin/musl-gcc hello.c
./a.out
To configure autoconf-based program to compile and link against musl,
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.
-
-Finally, it's worth noting that musl's include and lib directories in
-the build tree are setup to be usable without installation, if
-necessary. Just modify the paths in the spec file used by musl-gcc
-(it's located at $prefix/lib/musl-gcc.specs) to point to the
-source/build tree.
-
-
-
-==== Option 2: Installing musl as the primary C library ====
-
-In this setup, you will need an existing compiler/toolchain. It
-shouldn't matter whether it was configured for glibc, uClibc, musl, or
-something else entirely, but sometimes gcc can be uncooperative,
-especially if the system distributor has built gcc with strange
-options. It probably makes the most sense to perform the following
-steps inside a chroot setup or on a virtualized machine with the
-filesystem containing just a minimal toolchain.
-
-WARNING: DO NOT DO THIS ON AN EXISTING SYSTEM UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT
-TO CONVERT IT TO BE A MUSL-BASED SYSTEM!!
-
-1. If you are just upgrading an existing version of musl, you can skip
- step 1 entirely. Otherwise, move the existing include and lib
- directories on your system out of the way. Unless all the binaries
- you will need are static-linked, you should edit /etc/ld.so.conf
- (or equivalent) and put the new locations of your old libraries in
- the search path before you move them, or your system will break
- badly and you will not be able to continue.
-
-2. Configure musl's build with a command similar to:
- ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-gcc-wrapper
- Refer to ./configure --help for details on other options.
-
-3. Run "make" to compile musl.
-
-4. Run "make install" with appropriate privileges.
-
-5. If you are using gcc and wish to use dynamic linking, find the gcc
- directory containing libgcc.a (it should be something like
- /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.3.5, with the arch and version
- possibly different) and look for a specs file there. If none
- exists, use "gcc -dumpspecs > specs" to generate a specs file. Find
- the dynamic linker (/lib/ld-linux.so.2 or similar) and change it to
- "/lib/ld-musl-$ARCH.so.1" (with $ARCH replaced by your CPU arch).
-
-At this point, musl should be the default libc. Compile a small test
-program with gcc and verify (using readelf -a or objdump -x) that the
-dynamic linker (program interpreter) is /lib/ld-musl-$ARCH.so.1. If
-you're using static linking only, you might instead check the symbols
-and look for anything suspicious that would indicate your old glibc or
-uClibc was used.
projects / oweals / musl.git / commitdiff