I am cross compiling the open source library oRTP for MIPS processor (little-endian arch). My development system is i386 linux. I run the configure script as
./configure --host=mips-linux
The configure script uses the mips-linux-gnu-gcc compiler and builds the library. However when I try to link the library with an executable, I get undefined symbols saying that the ortp lib is built for big-endian and that the target is little-endian.
Running file command on an existing executable on the target shows
ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS32 rel2 version 1, dynamically
linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.12, with unknown
capability 0xf41 = 0x756e6700, with unknown capability 0x70100 =
0x1040000, not stripped
And running file on the ortp object file shows
ELF 32-bit MSB relocatable, MIPS, MIPS32 rel2 version 1 (SYSV), with
unknown capability 0x41000000 = 0xf676e75, with unknown capability
0x10000 = 0x70401, not stripped
Even though both are built for MIPS, the existing executable is LSB where as the ortp compiled object file is MSB.
How do I compile for MIPS and LSB so that linking goes fine?
Best Answer
Well, I feel terrible about myself. I explicitly gave the CC compiler as mipsel-linux-gcc and the issue was resolved.
CC=/path/to/mipsel-linux-gcc ./configure --host=mips-linux
So the way to go is to use mipsel-linux-gcc compiler in case you are compiling for little endian mips processor and use mips-linux-gcc only compiler for big-endian mips processtors.