Re: Cross compilers, anyone?

Re: Cross compilers, anyone?

[Joe Hildebrand]

>> In article <iank.746308839@tdc.dircon.co.uk>
>> on comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc Ian Kemmish writes:

   Ian> One of those customers who's always right:-) has just asked us
   Ian> for an evaluation copy of our product for NT running on an
   Ian> Alpha.  I'm sure they will be just the first of many. But I'm
   Ian> not the sort of person who goes buying hardware just for the
   Ian> sake of it...

   Ian> It strikes me that cross-compilation between different NT
   Ian> machines ought to be one of those things that's so easy even
   Ian> big companies get it right.

   Ian> However, the standard MS compilers don't do it.

   Ian> The Development Tools Catalogue doesn't show anyone else doing
   Ian> it.

   Ian> And to rub salt in, the same source indicates that the DEC
   Ian> compiler uses DEC's front end, not Microsoft's (at least the
   Ian> mips port of NT appears to have got *that* part right:->)

   Ian> Does anyone know of any commercially supported NT<->NT cross
   Ian> compilers out there?

This question was asked (with a slightly different slant) on
comp.lang.ada, today.

Background for comp.os.ms-windows.nt readers:
   NYU is writing a GNU Ada compiler called GNAT (GNU Ada Translator),
which will be integrated with gcc.  This was the response to a
question about the feasibility of porting GNAT to other architectures
(it is only available on Sparc and OS/2, now).  Note the part where it
says no one from the NT camp has asked for gcc to be ported.  Is
anyone out there interested in a FREE compiler for NT that can
cross-compile to 100+ different machine architectures and does C, C++,
Objective C, and Ada?

Sorry for the length of this post, but I thought it was neccesary to
provide complete information to the c.o.m.nt readers.

In article <25kmdn$16u@cmcl2.NYU.EDU> kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu
(Richard Kenner) writes:
   Richard> In article <1993Aug27.024824.21373@seas.gwu.edu> 
   Richard> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
   Richard> >This question makes me wonder if anyone has yet tried to 
   Richard> >_port_ GNAT.  It's an interesting process, because GNAT 
   Richard> >is written in Ada, not C.  One could bootstrap it by using 
   Richard> >a commercial Ada compiler - NYU first compiled GNAT with
   Richard> >Alsys. This process was documented in an NYU post
   Richard> >a while ago.

   Richard> In fact, you can't do this for any of the versions we've
   Richard> distributed, only the very early systems we had.  Now the
   Richard> `gnat1' executable is mixed-language, containing the C
   Richard> code of the GCC backend and the Ada code for the Ada
   Richard> front-end.  In fact, just recently we changed things so
   Richard> the backend (in C) calls Ada code for some tree-processing
   Richard> functions rather than providing duplicate C functions.

   Richard> Since no commercial compiler provides such a seamless integration
   Richard> between languages, GNAT can only be compiled with itself at this
   Richard> point.

   Richard> >But that's no fun - it requires a commercial compiler. An all-GNU
   Richard> >approach is to use the gcc cross-compilation facilities. If a GNU
   Richard> >SPARC-to-Sun3 cross exists (just to take one example), then one
   Richard> >compiles GNAT on the SPARC, takes the assembly to the Sun-3
   Richard> >and re-assembles. It is alleged to be fairly easy if you're an
   Richard> >experienced gcc hand.

   Richard> That's right.  In fact there are two approaches.  You can
   Richard> build a full cross-system, including GNAT (and GCC) along
   Richard> with a cross-assembler and linker (e.g., GAS and GLD).
   Richard> Brett Porter, one of the folks on the GNAT project,
   Richard> recently did this to be able to run Ada code an evaluation
   Richard> board containing some variant of the 68k (actually, he was
   Richard> originally interested, I believe, in C code, but built a
   Richard> cross-GNAT to see if it would work and it did).

   Richard> This approach is quite straightforward and almost automatic.

   Richard> If you don't want to bother with a cross-assembler and
   Richard> linker, you can do as Mike suggests and just produce the
   Richard> assembler files with a cross-GCC, then take them to the
   Richard> target and assemble them there.  It's straightforward, but
   Richard> involves some manual steps.  I did this for the RS/6000 a
   Richard> few weeks ago and will shortly need to do it for DEC's
   Richard> MIPS-based workstations, since that's what will be at
   Richard> Tri-Ada.

   Richard> >Indeed, I believe NYU is using only GNAT to compile new versions,
   Richard> >using Alsys only for "occasional sanity checks" as I think one 
   Richard> >of the NYU guys put it.

   Richard> That's very close to correct.  I don't believe that the
   Richard> folks here who use Sparcs use Alsys anymore.  Robert
   Richard> Dewar, though, uses a PC and still does most of his work
   Richard> with Alsys since the OS/2 version of GNAT has been lagging
   Richard> a bit.

   Richard> >If there are any gcc cross-compilatiuon gurus out there
   Richard> >with a little time to tinker, I think it would be fun to 
   Richard> >start some porting, so when the final version pops out, 
   Richard> >it will instantly be available on a bunch of platforms.

   Richard> I don't think there's much point in doing this work.  For
   Richard> one thing, it's fairly straightforward to do it on each
   Richard> target individually.  But the major issue is that doing it
   Richard> now for a target won't mean that it won't have to be
   Richard> redone later.  If you make a binary for some target right
   Richard> now, that does NOT mean that that binary will necessarily
   Richard> be useful later.  It is not at all uncommon for some code
   Richard> we've written in GNAT to hit a bug or unsupported feature
   Richard> in a previous GNAT version.  When that happens, the
   Richard> binaries will be useless for compiling later versions and
   Richard> the cross-work will need to be redone.

   Richard> It it our plan to not require a binary to build GNAT,
   Richard> merely a C compiler.  Most of the Ada code is at a fairly
   Richard> low level and fairly regular.  We intend to provide an
   Richard> Ada-to-C translator for the subset of Ada used in most of
   Richard> GNAT.  For some of the other Ada modules, such as error
   Richard> handling, we'll provide C code that will link, but not do
   Richard> much (i.e., abort when asked to print an error, since
   Richard> there won't be any compiling GNAT).  This will allow a
   Richard> bootstrap path.

   Richard> Collecting executables for all systems on which GNAT will
   Richard> work is not practical.  I just counted and found that GCC
   Richard> (and hence GNAT) has configuration files for 188 different
   Richard> systems, most of which are not binary-compatible with each
   Richard> other.  It's true that many of these systems don't exist
   Richard> anymore or are only of extremely narrow interest, but
   Richard> there are still probably dozens of distinct configurations
   Richard> that are current.  Having so many binaries doesn't seem
   Richard> practical.

   Richard> Unfortunately, what started this discussion was Windows
   Richard> NT.  There are no ports of GCC to any Windows NT
   Richard> configuration.  It was not clear which one was of interest
   Richard> to the original poster.  I will be doing a GCC port to the
   Richard> DEC Alpha version of NT as soon as DEC can get such a
   Richard> machine to me.  A port to NT on a PowerPC should also not
   Richard> be very far away, since we're starting to do the
   Richard> modifications to the RS/6000 configuration files to
   Richard> support the various Motorola chips that are
   Richard> implementations of the PowerPC architecture.

   Richard> As far as I know, no one is working on a GCC port to
   Richard> Windows NT on an x86.  The x86 work lately seems to be
   Richard> concentrating on the various dialects of OSF/1 (Rose and
   Richard> Elf).  I don't recall seeing any requests for a x86 NT
   Richard> port of GCC on the GCC mailing lists; most requests lately
   Richard> seem to be for the various embedded processors.

   Richard> If someone wants to do a GCC port to the x86 Windows NT,
   Richard> it would be appreciated and GNAT would fall out for free.
   Richard> Unlike porting to a new architecture, which requires a lot
   Richard> of knowlege about GCC, porting to a new system on a
   Richard> supported architecture merely requires (intimate) knowlege
   Richard> of the target operating system and is usually just a
   Richard> matter of setting appropriate configuration macros.  The
   Richard> only time that it can get tricky is if none of the
   Richard> standard object file formats (a.out, COFF and it's
   Richard> variants, Rose, or ELF) are used and there is also a
   Richard> problem with using the system's assembler.  I do not know
   Richard> if NT has these problems, but we've been running into them
   Richard> on OS/2.

--

----------
Joe Hildebrand                          Fuentez Systems Concepts
hildjj@fuentez.com                      11781 Lee-Jackson Hwy, Suite 700
Software Engineer                       Fairfax, VA 22033
                                        Phone: (703)273-1447   
                                        Fax:   (703)273-2972

Standard disclaimers apply

Re: Cross compilers, anyone?

[postman+]

While I cannot speak to the quality of the port itself (I've not used
it - yet) two months ago Congruent Technologies announced they had
completed a port of gcc to Windows NT (x86).

Tony Mason
mason+@transarc.com

Re: Cross compilers, anyone?

[David R Duling]

In article <HILDJJ.93Aug27102356@jupiter.fuentez.com> hildjj@jupiter.fuentez.co
m (Joe Hildebrand) writes:
>From: hildjj@jupiter.fuentez.com (Joe Hildebrand)
>Subject: Re: Cross compilers, anyone?
>Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 14:23:56 GMT


>>> In article <iank.746308839@tdc.dircon.co.uk>
>>> on comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc Ian Kemmish writes:

>says no one from the NT camp has asked for gcc to be ported.  Is
>anyone out there interested in a FREE compiler for NT that can
>cross-compile to 100+ different machine architectures and does C, C++,
>Objective C, and Ada?

yes.  I am and Im sure many others would be interested in a gcc for NT.

>   Richard> to the original poster.  I will be doing a GCC port to the
>   Richard> DEC Alpha version of NT as soon as DEC can get such a
>   Richard> machine to me.  A port to NT on a PowerPC should also not
>   Richard> be very far away, since we're starting to do the
>   Richard> modifications to the RS/6000 configuration files to
>   Richard> support the various Motorola chips that are
>   Richard> implementations of the PowerPC architecture.

>   Richard> As far as I know, no one is working on a GCC port to
>   Richard> Windows NT on an x86.  The x86 work lately seems to be

too bad.  Not even close to the scope of my job.  But thanks for the post.

- Dave


>----------
>Joe Hildebrand                          Fuentez Systems Concepts
>hildjj@fuentez.com                      11781 Lee-Jackson Hwy, Suite 700
>Software Engineer                       Fairfax, VA 22033
>                                        Phone: (703)273-1447   
>                                        Fax:   (703)273-2972

>Standard disclaimers apply

Re: Cross compilers, anyone?

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!agate!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!swrinde!menudo.uh.edu!nuchat]

Congruent have a cdrom that for $199 includes gcc,emacs,perl,smalltalk, grep
, sed,awk gmake.... available. Send a message to info@congruent.com. 
However they dont take credit cards. They also have a cd that provides
X-client functionality on NT. The contents of the Gnu cd are freely
redistributable, as per the gpl.


I have no relationship with congruent, just have the info from them.

Re: Cross compilers, anyone?

[Ian Kemmish]

ldm@texhrc.uucp (Lyle Meier) writes:


>Congruent have a cdrom that for $199 includes gcc,emacs,perl,smalltalk, grep
>, sed,awk gmake.... available. Send a message to info@congruent.com. 
>However they dont take credit cards. They also have a cd that provides
>X-client functionality on NT. The contents of the Gnu cd are freely
>redistributable, as per the gpl.
>
>

Hmmm.  I was hoping to avoid GCC, on the grounds that it always 
seems to end up being as big a resource sponge as MS products:-).

Every six months I get a call from some ex-colleagues saying 
`do you want to benchmark the latest version? It's as good as 
the mips compilers now'   It never is.

-- 
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Ian Kemmish                     18 Durham Close, Biggleswade, Beds SG18 8HZ
ian@eeyore.dircon.co.uk         Tel: +44 767 601 361
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