We won't be needing a C++ compiler until Chapter 6. So, only the gcc-core tarball needs to be unpacked at this time. 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 GCC. patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-&gcc-version;-mmap_test.patch patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-&gcc-version;-no_fixincludes.patch patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-&gcc-version;-libstdc++_no_debug.patch patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-&gcc-version;-libgcc_no_debug.patch It is recommended by the GCC installation documentation to build GCC outside of the source directory in a dedicated directory: mkdir ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build Prepare GCC to be compiled: CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" \     ../gcc-&gcc-version;/configure --prefix=/stage1 \     --with-local-prefix=/stage1 \     --disable-nls --enable-shared The meaning of the configure options are: --prefix=/static: This is NOT a typo. GCC hard codes some paths while compiling and so we need to pass /static as the prefix during the configure stage. We will pass the real installation prefix ($LFS/static) during the installation stage later on. --disable-shared: This prevents the build of dynamic libraries. They are useless to us at the moment. We'll create them when we reinstall GCC in chapter 6. --with-as=$LFS/static/bin/as and --with-ld=$LFS/static/bin/ld: GCC can be miscompiled if your host distribution's Binutils package is quite old. We need a good working static GCC until we reinstall GCC later in chapter 6. So by using as and ld from the Binutils package we compiled earlier in this chapter we ensure that GCC will work correctly. Continue with compiling the package: make BOOT_LDFLAGS="-static -s" \     BOOT_CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" \     STAGE1_CFLAGS="-pipe" bootstrap The meaning of the make options are: BOOT_LDFLAGS="-static": This is GCC's equivalent to make LDFLAGS="-static" as we use with other packages to compile them statically. bootstrap: The bootstrap target doesn't just compile GCC, but it compiles GCC a second time. It uses the first compiled programs to compile itself a second and third time to make sure the compiler was compiled properly and can compile itself properly. make -k check And finish off installing the package: make install The meaning of the make option is: install-no-fixedincludes: This prevents the fixincludes script from running. Preventing this is necessary because under normal circumstances the GCC installation will run the fixincludes script which scans your system for header files that need to be fixed. It might find that the Glibc header files of your host system need to be fixed. If so, it will fix them and put them in $LFS/static/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.2. Later on in chapter 6 you will install Glibc which will put its header files in /usr/include. Next you will install other programs that use the Glibc headers and GCC will look in /static/lib/gcc-lib before looking in /usr/include, with the result of finding and using the fixed Glibc header files from your host distribution, which are probably incompatible with the Glibc version actually used on the LFS system. As the finishing touch we'll create the $LFS/static/bin/cc symlink. A lot of programs and scripts try to run cc instead of gcc This is to keep programs generic and usable on all kinds of Unix systems. Not everybody has GNU CC installed. Just running cc (C Compiler) leaves the user free to decide which C compiler to install. The symlink will point to the system's default compiler. ln -sf gcc /stage1/bin/cc