Compiling and Installing glibc x.y on Debian

Compiling and Installing glibc x.y on Debian

Prerequisites

sudo apt-get install automake autoconf libtool make gcc

If you’re unsure of your system’s host type, you can run the following command to check:

gcc -dumpmachine

For demo, we will use libc 2.1

Visit the GNU C Library (glibc) website

Find libc in https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/

1. Download the Source Code:

   wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.1.3.tar.gz
   tar -xvzf glibc-2.1.3.tar.gz
   cd glibc-2.1.3
   

2. Prepare the Build Environment: Create a separate build directory to keep your source directory clean:

   mkdir build
   cd build
   

3. Configure the Build You need to specify the installation directory where the compiled glibc will be installed. For example, let’s install it in /opt/glibc-2.1.3:

   ../configure --prefix=/opt/glibc-2.1.3 --enable-add-ons
   

   Adjust the --prefix option to your preferred installation directory. You can also specify other options like --enable-debug if you want to build a debug version.

4. Compile the Library Compile the library using make:

   make -j$(nproc)
   

5. Install the Library After successful compilation, install the library:

   sudo make install
   

6. Update Library Cache Update the dynamic linker run-time bindings:

sudo ldconfig

1. Linking Against Your Custom glibc To link your program with the specific glibc version, you need to specify the path to the glibc installation using the -Wl,-rpath and -L options:

   gcc -Wl,-rpath=/opt/glibc-2.31/lib -L/opt/glibc-2.31/lib -I/opt/glibc-2.31/include hello.c -o hello