Compiling sdcc for FreeBSD

In preparation for a possible new project, I needed to build sdcc, a compiler that targets a bunch of 8-bit architectures. You can find information about sdcc at their sourceforge page: http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/

Usually, this is just a port away. But due to looking at the wrong tree, I thought I had to compile it myself. The port and package are great, and are what people should normally be using, but the problems showed the need to use a trick or three to get the job done. I thought I'd document them here, since they are minimal and easy to write up.

FreeBSD's compiler doesn't default to having /usr/local/include in its include path, or /usr/local/lib in its library path. Normally, one would try to get around this by just add --prefix /usr/local to the configure command. However, that doesn't work for the sdcc stuff (since it is already the default). You have to explicitly add more things to the command line. After some digging, it turns out it's only a few variables to worry about:

./configure CC=clang CXX=clang++ CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib" CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib"

 The key ones here are CPPFLAGS and CFLAGS.

With that, I have a build sdcc. But it's a pain to install. The port / package is much easier for that reason alone.