This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building binutils. It is recommended by the Binutils installation documentation to build Binutils outside of the source directory in a dedicated directory: mkdir ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build Next, prepare Binutils to be compiled: ../binutils-&binutils-version;/configure \     --prefix=/stage1 --disable-nls The meaning of the (new) configure switches are: --disable-nls: This option disables internationalization (also known as i18n). We don't need this for our static programs and nls often causes problems when you're linking statically. Continue with compiling the package: make LDFLAGS="-all-static" The meaning of the make option is: LDFLAGS="-all-static": This is how we tell Binutils that all programs should be statically linked. Setting the LDFLAGS variable is the common way of specifying we want a static link to take place, however, its value and the way it is set is not always the same. You'll see with the remaining packages that there are different ways of setting up the LDFLAGS variable. And finish off installing the package: make install make -C ld clean make -C ld LIB_PATH=/stage1/lib Do not remove the binutils-* directories. We need them again later on in this chapter.