Error Compiling Binutils for i386-elf on macOS: Malformed Archives

I’m trying to cross-compile binutils for i386-elf on macOS (Sequoia 15.0.1, arm64) but encounter an error when running make. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Installed required dependencies:

   brew install gmp mpfr libmpc texinfo
   

2. Downloaded and extracted binutils 2.41:

   mkdir -p ~/src
   cd ~/src
   wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.41.tar.gz
   tar -xzf binutils-2.41.tar.gz
   

3. Created a build directory:

   mkdir build-binutils
   cd build-binutils
   

4. Set environment variables:

   export CC=gcc
   export CXX=g++
   export AR=llvm-ar
   

5. Configured binutils:

   ../binutils-2.41/configure \
     --target=i386-elf \
     --prefix=/usr/local/cross \
     --disable-nls \
     --disable-werror
   

6. Ran make while compiling the libbfd.la target and encountered the following error:

llvm-ar: error: truncated or malformed archive (terminator characters in archive member "\000\000" not the correct "`\n" values for the archive member header for 0     0     644)
make[4]: *** [libbfd.la] Error 1
make[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all-bfd] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

Before that I only get source code related warnings.

Suspicions

• It might be unrelated, but I’m concerned that when I run gcc --version, it shows Clang instead of GCC:

$ gcc --version
Apple clang version 16.0.0 (clang-1600.0.26.3)
Target: arm64-apple-darwin24.0.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin

• Can you even compile binutils on macOS?

What I’ve tried

I tried:

• Compiling a different version of binutils.
• Using a different version of both gcc and clang.
• Redownloading all dependencies and different versions of them.
• Configuring and making it with expor AR=ar (the following error occurs):

checking whether gcc supports -Wold-style-definition... ld: multiple errors: archive member '/' not a mach-o file in '/Users/viliamholly/src/binutils-build/libiberty/libiberty.a'; archive member '/' not a mach-o file in '/Users/viliamholly/src/binutils-build/zlib/libz.a'; archive member '/' not a mach-o file in '/Users/viliamholly/src/binutils-build/bfd/.libs/libbfd.a'
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

System Info

• macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 (arm64)

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