Announcing pts-clang: A portable LLVM Clang C and C++ compiler release running on Linux i386 and Linux x86_64

This blog post announces pts-clang, a portable LLVM Clang C and C++ compiler release running on Linux i386 and Linux x86_64.

pts-clang is a portable Linux i386 version of the clang tool of the LLVM Clang compiler, version 3.3. C and C++ compilation is supported, other frontends (such as Objective C) were not tested. The tool runs on Linix i386 and Linux amd64 systems. It's libc-independent, all code is statically linked to the binary. It also contains statically linked linker (ld), so installing binutils is not necessary.

See all details in the most recent README.

Trying it out

If you don't have root access and you don't have the libc headers (e.g. in the libc6-dev package, sample file /usr/include/stdio.h) installed, you can still try pts-clang, with pts-xstatic. See the details in this blog post.

If you don't have /usr/include/stdio.h, install the libc development package:

$ sudo apt-get install libc6-dev

To be able to compile both i386 and amd64 binaries, and you have a recent Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu Precise) you can install the libc6-dev package for both architectures:

$ sudo apt-get intall libc6-dev:i386 libc6-dev:x86_64

Download and try pts-clang like this:

$ cd /tmp
$ rm -f pts-clang-latest.sfx.7z
$ wget http://pts.50.hu/files/pts-clang/pts-clang-latest.sfx.7z
$ chmod +x pts-clang-latest.sfx.7z
$ ./pts-clang-latest.sfx.7z -y  # Creates the pts-clang directory.
$ cat >>hw.c <<'END'
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
  return !printf("Hello, %s!\n", "World");
}
$ pts-clang/bin/clang -s -O2 -W -Wall hw.c
$ ./a.out
Hello, World!
END

Use clang++ for compiling C++ code, but for that you have to install one of the libstdc++...-dev packages first.

Does pts-clang create portable executables?

By default (without the -xstatic or -xermine flags), the executables created by pts-clang are just as portable as those generated by gcc or clang. They are dynamically linked (unless -static is specified), thus they depend on the system libraries (e.g. /lib/libc.so.6).

If the -static flag is specified, then the executable becomes statically linked, but this doesn't provide real portability, because for calls such as getpwent(3) (getting info of Unix system users) and gethostbyname(3) (DNS resolution), glibc loads files such as libnss_compat.so, libnss_dns.so. On the target system those libraries may be incompatible with your binary, so you may get a segfault or unintended behavior. pts-xstatic solves this, because it uses uClibc.

If the -xstatic flag is specified, pts-xstatic is used to create a portable statically linked, Linux i386 executable, linked against uClibc.

If the -xermine flag is specified, Ermine is used to pack library and other dependencies to a single, portable executable. This can be even more portable than -xstatic, because Ermine can pack locale files, gconv libraries etc. Ermine is a Linux ELF portable executable creator: it takes a dynamically linked ELF executable, discovers its dependencies (e.g. dynamic libraries, NSS libaries), and builds a protable, statically linked ELF executable containing all the dependencies. See the features, licensing information and get Ermine from here. The result can be even more portable than -xstatic, because Ermine can pack locale files, gconv libraries etc. Not all the packing is automatic: use -xermine,... to specify packing flags to Ermine.

Portability improvements

• pts-clang is portable (libc-independent): all shipped binaries are either statically linked. (The clang binary is packed with Ermine, the file is a statically linked executable, which contains a dynamically linked executables and its dependencies (e.g. libc etc.) with itself.) The system libraries are not used for running the compiler (but they are used for linking the output file, except when -xstatic is specified).
• A statically linked linker (ld, GNU gold) binary is provided, so GNU binutils is not a requirement for compilation on the host system.
• Some other optional, statically linked binutils tools (ar, ranlib and strip) are also provided for convenience in the pts-static-binu binary release, see more info in its README. These tools can be used for auxiliary tasks such as building static libraries.

Because of these portability improvemenets, it's easy to run pts-clang in a chroot environment.

C++11 and C++0x compatibility

Please note that even though Clang 3.3 supports C++11, much of that is implemented in the C++ standard library (GCC's libstdc++ or Clang's libc++) header files, and no attempt is made in pts-clang to provide the most up-to-date C++ standard library. With -xstatic, an old libstdc++ (the one from gcc-4.4.3) is provided, and without -xstatic the system's default libstdc++ will be used, which can be older than C++11.

Author, copyright and recompilation

The binaries here were created by Péter Szabó, using existing LLVM Clang and uClibc cross compiler and other binaries, and writing some custom trampoline code. See the details in the GitHub repository.

All software mentioned in this blog post is free software and open source, except for Ermine.

Thanks to Ermine

The author of pts-clang is grateful and says thank you to the author of Ermine, who has provided a free-of-charge Ermine license, using which the portable clang.bin binary was created from the official Clang binary release (which is libc-dependent).

If you want to create portable Linux executables (and you don't care too much about file size), give Ermine a try! It's the most comfortable, easy-to-use, and comprehensive tool available.

Installation instructions for the old version (v1)

Download the old version (v1) from here: http://pts.szit.bme.hu/files/pts-clang/pts-clang-xstatic-bin-3.3-linux-i386-v1.sfx.7z You can extract it with 7z (in the p7zip package), but you can also make it executable and run it, because it's a self-extracting archive.

Clang itself is a cross-compiler, so it can generate object files for many architectures and operating systems (see the -target flag), but you also need a system-specific linker (not included) to build binaries or libraries. In newer versions (v2 and later), a copy of the GNU gold linker is also incuded.

This release introduces a non-standard command-line flag -xstatic which enables the Linux i386 target with static linking using the bundled uClibc library. The required .h and .a files, as well as a portable GNU ld linker binary are also included for the use of this flag. In newer versions (v2 and later) the files required by -xstatic are available in a separate download, see the details in this blog post.

Installation instructions for the even old version (v0)

Download version v0 from here: pts-clang-xstatic-bin-3.3-linux-i386.sfx.7z. You can extract it with 7z (in the p7zip package), but you can also make it executable and run it, because it's a self-extracting archive.

More info

See the most recent README for full installation instructions, usage details, full feature list etc.