On Mon, Sep 10, 2001 at 04:13:27PM +0200, Francois Le_Coat/mailaxis wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to know why the latest GCC 3.0.1 is not binary released
> on our ATARI platforms. It seems that there is a ATARI target in this
> released, as we can see in the config.guess file :
>
> atari*:OpenBSD:*:*)
> echo m68k-unknown-openbsd${UNAME_RELEASE}
> exit 0 ;;
> # The situation for MiNT is a little confusing. The machine name
> # can be virtually everything (everything which is not
> # ...
The files config.guess and config.sub are usually automatically updated
from the automake repository. A platform being listed there is not
necessarily supported by a particular package that contains recent
versions of these files.
> Does GNU CC needs to be patched anymore ?
Of course it does. Every unsupported platform needs patches for gcc.
> If not, I would strongly be interested by a binary release. I can't do
> it myself. But is there somebody that would do it for us ?
AFAIK Frank Naumann maintains the binary versions of gcc (and binutils and
gdb, the three packages are closely related). If there is no binary
release for the very latest gcc version from him, I would treat that as a
sign that the MiNT version for the very latest gcc is not yet stable
enough. A compiler can _not_ be treated as a stand-alone tool, you have
to ensure that the entire suite of at least compiler, binutils (linker,
assembler, archiver, ...) and libc work together flawlessly. It is not by
accident that serious Linux/BSD distributions do not yet distribute gcc
3.x (afaik they currently all stay with gcc 2.95.x, just like Sparemint
does).
Besides, _any_ binary or source release for gcc requires intimate
knowledge of the internals and options of all the GNU development
tools. "Programming with GNU Software" is an excellent book on this
topic:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prognu/
Pray read it, before even thinking about releasing anything that may look
like an official MiNT version of these tools.
And before even thinking about releasing something that is intended to be
the official MiNT contribution/port to GNU tools (not only gcc and
binutils but virtually any GNU software), become familiar first with
the general techniques around the standard build process for GNU
software; pray read "The Goat Book"
http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/
The build environment for gcc, binutils, and gdb is much more complicated
(think "the cygnus tree") than for other GNU tools. But you will not be
able to grok with the various configuration scriptings used for gcc and
stuff unless you have much more than a general idea about the standard GNU
build process.
GNU autoconf, automake and libtool make building and installing software
from sources very easy for the end user, almost as easy as properly
packaged binary distributions. But that should not con you into thinking
that /maintaining/ these packages is a trivial task. The least you should
do is run the test suites shipped with the sources. I doubt that anybody
ran the test suites for gcc and friends lately on the MiNT platform.
Ciao
Guido
P.S.: If anybody intends to purchase one of the above mentioned books from
an online book-store, please remember that some of these companies chase
software writers for alleged violation of so-called software patents and
some don't:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazon.html
Thanks!
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