A beginner's question

[Rudolf Schubert]

        Hi,

        I'm about porting an old Programm developped with Gardens Point Modula-2
        (GPM) and facing a few problems. But before I possibly ask silly
        questions I'd like to know how I can make sure to use the latest
        version of GM2.

        I'm working on a (current) Arch Linux with this gcc version:
        gcc (GCC) 12.2.1 20230201

        I started with the instructions found here:
        https://www.nongnu.org/gm2/12/development.html

        The idea was to have a local installation directory, so my
        configure command was this:

        ../gcc-git-devel-modula2/configure --prefix=<some_local_inst_dir> 
--enable-languages=default,m2 --enable-libgm2

        But during 'make install' I got this error:

        /usr/bin/ld: build/genmodes.o: relocation R_X86_64_32S against 
`.rodata' can not be used when making a PIE object; recompile with -fPIE

        So finally I changed my configure command:

        ../gcc-git-devel-modula2/configure --prefix=<some_local_inst_dir> 
--with-system-zlib --enable-default-pie --enable-default-ssp 
--enable-languages=default,m2 --enable-libgm2

        and could easily compile the famous hello.mod:

        <some_local_inst_dir>/bin/gm2 -g hello.mod

        ldd showed this:

rudolf@archkiste: /mo1/more_homedata/lern/gpm_gm2 $ ldd a.out
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffe00770000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fcb2ca00000)
        libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fcb2c918000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fcb2cc9f000)
        libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fcb2c731000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 
(0x00007fcb2cd0e000)

rudolf@archkiste: /mo1/more_homedata/lern/gpm_gm2 $ ./a.out
hello world

        This was the easy part. Then I tried compiling my 'big' programm
        which I wanted to port but did  not succeed. I played around a bit
        but with no success. Again I saw 'PIE' in some messages and I
        guessed if the problem might be that my Arch system does not use
        PIE but GM2 was now compiled with PIE and that this will go wrong.

        So I installed a Debian sid with gm2 in a virtual machine (BTW,
        gm2 --version says this: gm2 (Debian 12.2.0-14) 12.2.0) and with
        this installation I am now finally able to compile and run a
        modified version of my 'big' programm.

        The modifications I made were to work around errors I suspect
        might be caused by GM2. When using GPM, however I do not need
        to use these workarounds! But I'm not sure if GM2 in Debian sid
        really is the latest version. So I first want to make sure I'm
        using the latest version. And thus my question simply is:

        How will I do this?
BR

Rudolf


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Rudolf Schubert                 \
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