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configure options

The following discussion is a summary of the configure options and arguments that are most often useful for building GDB. configure also has several other options not listed here. See the info file, ‘configure.info’, in the node, ‘What Configure Does’, for a full explanation of configure.

configure [--help]
[--prefix=dir]
[--srcdir=dirname]
[--norecursion][--rm]
[--target=target] host

You may introduce options with a single ‘-’ rather than ‘--’ if you prefer; but you may abbreviate option names if you use ‘--’.

--help
Display a quick summary of how to invoke configure.

-prefix=dir
Configure the source to install programs and files under directory ‘dir’.

--srcdir=dirname
Use this option to make configurations in directories separate from the GDB source directories. Among other things, you can use this to build (or maintain) several configurations simultaneously, in separate directories.

configure writes configuration specific files in the current directory, but arranges for them to use the source in the directory dirname.

configure creates directories under the working directory in parallel to the source directories below dirname.

Warning:
Using this option requires GNU make, or another make that implements the VPATH feature; for more on the VPATH option, see GNU Make in GNUPro Advanced Topics.

--norecursion
Configure only the directory level where configure is executed; do not propagate configuration to subdirectories.

--rm
Remove files otherwise built during configuration.

--target=target
Configure GDB for cross-debugging programs running on the specified target. Without this option, GDB is configured to debug programs that run on the same machine (host) as GDB itself.

There is no convenient way to generate a list of all available targets.

host...
Configure GDB to run on the specified host. There is no convenient way to generate a list of all available hosts.

configure accepts other options, for compatibility with configuring other GNU tools recursively; but these are the only options that affect GDB or its supporting libraries.