Error Compiling Binutils for i386-elf on macOS

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:

Installed required dependencies:
```
brew install gmp mpfr libmpc texinfo
```

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

Created a build directory:
```
mkdir build-binutils
cd build-binutils
```

Set environment variables:

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

Configured binutils:

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

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.

I found a similar issue that suggests the archive must be less than 4GB (link), but I’m unsure how to resolve this on my setup. I also don’t think that the archive is >4GB.

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

System Info:

macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 (arm64)

Edit

When I configure and make it with expor AR=ar I get a more precise error:

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)

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