Re: Package building

[Bertrand Dekoninck]

> Le 23 nov. 2019 à 15:48, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> a 
> écrit :
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> On 11/20/19 12:28 PM, David Chisnall wrote:
>> 
>> I'm happy to take contributions for the assembly paths for other 
>> architectures.  We currently have:
>> 
>> - x86-32
>> - x86-64
>> - AArch32
>> - AArch64
>> - MIPS (at least n64 works, I think o32 and n32 are there but untested).
>> 
>> I passionately hate PowerPC assembly, so will definitely not write that 
>> myself, but anyone who wants to add it is very welcome to do so.  I will 
>> probably get around to adding RISC-V support at some point.
> 
> 
> this list only lacks in my interest:
> 
> - MIPS LittleEndian (as soon as I get the small project with Nikolaus 
> actually do something useful) or is your implementation already 
> endian-independent?
> 
> - PPC32 (the only thing I have access to) and PPC64 to be accepted by the 
> mainstream users today
> 
> - SPARC32 and SPARC64
> 
> 
> sadly, it has been ages I touched PPC  (which as much as I love CPU concept, 
> always hated when working in assembly) and SPARC code, but it would be a nice 
> addition.
> 
> On both PPC and SPARC I only use GCC, but... if that works, I'd be tickled to 
> work lower level again.
> 
> Riccardo
> 
> 

I’m happy to see how such a sensitive topic (compilers…)  does progress these 
days. And I’d really be very happy if the gnustep runtime could run on ppc 
(both 32 and 64).

Last time I tried (on debian 8 ppc32, 1 year ago or even more ?) it failed, and 
I was alone with my questions. The problem was not only the assembly bits (as 
David said, there is a slower alternative) but some problem with clang (I don’t 
remember…). I’d be happy to help here and test again. I can’t code any 
assembly, but I can test on PPC32 and PPC64. I fear I need to install debian 
sid on  my machines, which is a pain for now. I know you (Ricardo) did install 
it on a powerbook. Can we have a decent X11 session there, and a decent 
compiler ? If we can build libobjc on this system, then it’ll be assembly 
coding time.

Which is the oldest version of Clang mandatory to build the gnustep runtime 
(1.9 and 2.0) ? Do we need a specific linker ? I would like to avoid clang’s 
build and use the distro’s one.

Bertrand