Sega Dreamcast Toolchains Maker (<tt>dc-chain</tt>) with macOS

This document contains all the instructions to create a fully working toolchains targeting the Sega Dreamcast system under macOS.

This document was initially written while using macOS (10.14 Mojave) but it should be applicable on all modern macOS systems. Note that Apple introduced some breaking changes in 10.14 Mojave; so starting from that version, some header files have moved. They have been removed in 10.15 Catalina and later versions. dc-chain supports all modern macOS versions, including pre-Mojave releases.

This document has been refreshed using 14.2.1 Sonoma.

Introduction

On macOS system, the package manager is the brew tool, which is provided by the Homebrew project.

If you have never used the brew tool before, you will need to install it using your standard user account.

Besides the brew installation and setup, the rest of the operations in this document should be executed with root user privileges. To do that, use the sudo command. You will need to add the sudo command before entering all the commands specified below.

Prerequisites

Before doing anything, you will have to install some prerequisites in order to build the whole toolchain.

Installation of the Developer Tools

By default, the macOS system doesn't have the macOS Developer Tools installed, so we must first install them. You may ignore these instructions below if you already have Xcode installed on your system.

1. Open a Terminal.
2. Then input: xcode-select --install
3. When the window opens, click on the Install button, then click on the Accept button.

The macos Developer Tools should be now installed. You can test this by entering gcc --version in the Terminal.

Note: On macOS, gcc redirects to clang from the LLVM project. This is normal and doesn't affect the dc-chain process.

Installation of Homebrew

As already mentioned in the introduction, the macOS system doesn't come with a package manager, but fortunately, the Homebrew project exists to fill this gap.

Visit https://brew.sh and follow the instructions to install the brew package manager. Please note that all operations done involving Homebrew installation and use should be done under a normal user account, not using root or sudo.

You can check if brew is installed by running brew --version.

Installation of required packages

The packages below need to be installed:

brew install wget gettext texinfo gmp mpfr libmpc libelf jpeg-turbo libpng

Preparing the environment installation

Enter the following to prepare KallistiOS and the toolchains:

mkdir -p /opt/toolchains/dc/
cd /opt/toolchains/dc/
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/cadcdev/kallistios kos
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/cadcdev/kos-ports

Compilation

The dc-chain system may be customized by setting up a [Makefile.cfg] file in the root of the dc-chain directory tree. If this is desired, read the main README for more information on setting up custom options for the toolchain; however, in most circumstances, the stable defaults already present in Makefile.dreamcast.cfg will be fine.

Building the toolchain

To build the toolchain, do the following:

1. Navigate to the dc-chain directory by entering: cd /opt/toolchains/dc/kos/utils/dc-chain/
2. (Optional) Copy and alter the Makefile.cfg file options to your liking.
3. Enter the following to start downloading and building toolchain: make

Now it's time to have a coffee as this process can be long: several minutes to hours will be needed to build the full toolchain, depending on your system.

Removing all useless files

After everything is done, you can cleanup all temporary files by entering:

make distclean

Next steps

After following this guide, the toolchains should be ready.

Now it's time to compile KallistiOS.

You may consult the README file from KallistiOS now.