Things AVR-Ada needs to sort out - calling Rolf

[Lucretia <laguest9000@googlemail.com>]

Hi,

Looking back at AVR stuff again and I still cannot believe Rolf Ebert hacks up the GCC build so much still.

As of GCC-4.9.4, the ability to build bare metal GNAT builds has been put back in place, see https://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/gcc/trunk/gcc/ada/gcc-interface/Makefile.in?r1=218003&r2=219183&pathrev=219183 for the patch.

This then renders 23-gcc-4.7-ada-Makefile.patch and 24-gcc-4.7-ada-gnattools.patch unnecessary and quite possibly no_25-gcc-4.7-ada-gnattools_bug55243.patch too. 

The -ffreestanding is part of the C standard for compiling OS kernels where there is no C runtime libs and has nothing to do with Ada, this should be removed, it should never have even been there. Therefore, 71-gcc-4.7-ada-freestanding.patch is irrelevant.

As for 72-gcc-4.7-ada-timebase.patch, I'm not sure about this one. Is there really a need for this at all? Why does the time duration need to be changed for AVR?

Given the above, I cannot see the need for 73-gcc-4.7-ada-gnat1_print_path.patch either.

The way to build this new compiler is to use --disable-libada in the configure command then:

make all-gcc
make all-target-libgcc
make -C gcc cross-gnattools ada.all.cross
make install-strip-gcc install-target-libgcc

as can be seen here - https://github.com/Lucretia/free-ada/blob/develop/includes/bare_metal.inc

I think if this were sorted out, it would make building the compiler easier and any extra patches could be passed onto the FSF for inclusion into the source, with proper copyright assignments in place. You would only then require your custom runtime to be distributed to be built.