Re: PPC port of PUPA

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Wednesday 31 December 2003 20:00, Marco Gerards wrote:
> I think that we need a "TERM" variable in PUPA.

Agreed.

> What really bothers me is conf/*.rmk.  Open Firmware can load ELF
> files so it is not required to install PUPA on a bootsector.  To me
> it seems that the current build scripts are pc only and has no
> support for such situations.

It *has* support. That's why i386-pc.rmk exists.

You need to prepare powerpc-apple.rmk or something similar. You can copy 
and modify most of the parts from i386-pc.rmk, but you have to make 
your own rule for the bootstrap. This part cannot be shared among 
various architectures, regardless of what build tool is used.

If you want a completely different target (e.g. pkgdata_OBJECTS), feel 
free to extend genmk.rb. It is quite small and trivial. But if you are 
not familiar with Ruby, I can help you.

You don't have to care about the fact that PUPA must be installed into a 
boot sector on i386-pc, because this is done by another script anyway. 

> I think I've also found a bug while crosscompiling.  I used
> "./configure --host=powerpc-elf", but this didn't work.  After this
> small change it did:

You should specify the build system as well when cross-compiling. I 
think this is documented in somewhere, but I don't remember very well. 
Maybe in the autotool book?

> I hope to have something working really soon.  Would you like small
> patches every time or one huge patch? :)

Small ones are always much better. A large patch is quite difficult to 
understand.

> Is there anything I should know about the ppc port or Open Firmware?
> (Does someone know about some nasty bugs or where to find
> documentation?  It seems there is no free documentation available
> :().

There are many bugs, of course. I think you can get a lot of information 
from yaboot. I have seen a list of bugs in all Macintosh products 
before.

Okuji