Preparation

Since we will be extracting several source archives into subdirectories and generation binaries in other subdirectories, it is best to do the building in a new directory that you can easy delete after the build is complete. In this guide, it will be assumed that you build in a directory called hc12build within your home directory, i.e., $HOME/hc12build. To set this up, you can open a new shell (which you will want to keep open for the rest of the build) and execute these commands:

mkdir ~/hc12build
cd ~/hc12build

The next step is to download the source archives for the packages. You can save them anywhere on your system, but we'll assume you chose to save the source archives in the ~/hc12build directory. You can download the archives from the FreeHC12 downloads page with your web browser, or you may prefer to download the source archives from the command line:

wget http://freehc12.gibibit.com/files/binutils-2.18.50.20080409.tar.bz2
wget http://freehc12.gibibit.com/files/gcc-4.2-svn134301.tar.bz2
wget http://freehc12.gibibit.com/files/newlib-1.16.0.tar.gz

You are now ready to build and install the three packages.

Installing Binutils

To install binutils, execute the following at a shell prompt:

tar -xjf binutils-2.18.50.20080409.tar.bz2
mkdir build-binutils && cd build-binutils
../binutils-2.18.50.20080409/configure \
        --target=m6812-elf --prefix=$HOME/bin/m6812-elf
make -j2
make install

checking for C compiler default output file name...
configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details.

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Now put the m6812-elf binutils in your PATH so that they can be used for the gcc build process, by executing the following command in your shell:

export PATH="$HOME/bin/m6812-elf/bin:$PATH"

To test the Binutils installation, execute:

m6812-elf-objdump

If you get a page or so of help on command line options, then your installation was successful and you can proceed to installing gcc.

Installing gcc

We'll do an out-of-source build of gcc:

cd ~/hc12build
tar -xjf gcc-4.2-svn134301.tar.bz2
mkdir build-gcc && cd build-gcc
../gcc-4.2-svn134301/configure \
        --target=m6812-elf --prefix=$HOME/bin/m6812-elf \
        --disable-nls --disable-libssp --enable-languages=c,c++
make -j2
make install

gcc: gengtype-lex.c: No such file or directory
gcc: no input files
make[2]: *** [build/gengtype-lex.o] Error 1

The m6812-elf gcc binaries are already in your path since you added $HOME/bin/m6812-elf/bin to your path after installing binutils. To test gcc, execute:

m6812-elf-gcc -v

and ensure that gcc displays its version information. If you get a response indicating command not found, then something is wrong and you should make sure that your PATH is set correctly, and that gcc was installed to the right directory.

Installing Newlib

This is the C standard library for embedded systems. Even if you don't intend to use any C standard library functions, Newlib provides some helpful headers such as stdint.h, which defines uint8_t and other specific integral types.

Building Newlib:

cd ~/hc12build
tar -xzf newlib-1.16.0.tar.gz
mkdir build-newlib && cd build-newlib
../newlib-1.16.0/configure --prefix=$HOME/bin/m6812-elf \
        --target=m6812-elf \
        --disable-newlib-io-float --disable-newlib-multithread
make
make install

WARNING: `makeinfo' is missing on your system.

Final Setup

The last thing to do is edit your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile to set up the required environment variables. At this point, putting $HOME/bin/m6812-elf/bin in your path is all that is needed, but when you install the FreeHC12 library, you will need to set up a couple more environment variables so that it can be located. To prepare for that step, we will create a file called .m6812-env in our home directory with the following contents:

PATH="$HOME/bin/m6812-elf/bin:$PATH"

Then, add the following line to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile (depending on which one your system is set up to use):

. ~/.m6812-env

(Make sure there is a space between the . and the ~/.m6812-env.)

Now if you log out and log back in to your account, you should still be able to execute m6812-elf-gcc from the shell prompt, since your .profile properly set up your PATH.

Binutils

gcc

I tried to build gcc 4.3 and gcc 4.4, and both failed to compile for the HC12 architecture. The 4.2 branch is the latest gcc version that I have been able to get working for the HC12.

Newlib