MIPS binutils

Introduction

For creating MIPS or RISC-V test traces we use GNU binutils: assembler, linker, and objdump. Usually they are provided for the same architecture as a host machine, but we can build them for cross-compiling, ie generating MIPS programs on x86 machines.

This instruction is for MIPS binutils. to get binutils for RISC-V, follow this instruction.

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Get GNU Binutils from package repository

If you use Debian or Ubuntu (including Windows Linux Subsystem), you may get package with APT:

sudo apt-get install binutils-mips-linux-gnu

For Ubuntu 12.04 and older and Debian, you have to add repositories:

deb https://ftp.de.debian.org/debian squeeze main
deb https://www.emdebian.org/debian squeeze main

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Build Binutils manually

If you use OS X, MSys, or other operating systems, you have to build GNU binutils by your own.

This cheat-sheet is based on this following instruction: https://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Toolchains#Roll-your-own. See it if you have any problem or need more information.

Note: this instruction works only for Linux machines. It was verified on Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 2.6.32-042stab084.26 x86_64).

# Install prerequisites 
sudo apt-get install bison flex texinfo

# Download binutils sources from gnu.org FTP server:
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.31.tar.bz2
tar xjf binutils-2.31.tar.bz2

# Alternatively, you may clone them with Git:
# git clone git://sourceware.org/git/binutils-gdb.git --branch binutils-2_31

# Create a folder where the binutils will be installed (can be any)
mkdir /opt/cross

# Create a folder for a build process (can be any):  
cd /tmp
mkdir build-binutils && cd build-binutils

# Configure build (can dump a lot of info):
# Note that we disabled build of `gprof` and `gdb` as we do not use them.
/path/to/binutils/configure --target=mips-linux-gnu --prefix=/opt/cross --disable-gprof --disable-gdb --disable-werror

# Make sources (can dump a lot of info):  
make
  
# Install (can dump a lot of info, usually requires sudo):  
sudo make install

# Update PATH variable to have binaries available:
export PATH=$PATH;/opt/cross/bin

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Create a MIPS binary with binutils

• Create a file with assembler code and save it as <test name>.s

Note: Specify __start: before the first instruction of your program. This is required by mipt-mips to find a starting point of execution.

• Generate an object file:

mips-linux-gnu-as <test name>.s -o <test name>.o

• Convert the object file into the binary file:

mips-linux-gnu-ld <test name>.o -o <test name>.out

• (optional) Look the content of .out using (pay attention only to .text section):

mips-linux-gnu-objdump -D <test name>.out

Look for more information here: https://github.com/MIPT-ILab/mips-traces