From owner-freebsd-alpha Mon Jan 12 14:16:37 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA09894 for alpha-outgoing; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 14:16:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (cimlog.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.51.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA09695 for ; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 14:15:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jb@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au) Received: (from jb@localhost) by freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (8.8.7/8.8.7) id JAA03370; Tue, 13 Jan 1998 09:20:26 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from jb) From: John Birrell Message-Id: <199801122220.JAA03370@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au> Subject: Re: Bootstrapping FreeBSD/Alpha In-Reply-To: <199801122137.OAA06273@harmony.village.org> from Warner Losh at "Jan 12, 98 02:37:06 pm" To: imp@village.org (Warner Losh) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 09:20:25 +1100 (EST) Cc: alpha@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL32 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Warner Losh wrote: > What does NetBSD/alpha use for tools? Out of the box as, et al from > binutils? Or something that has been hacked special for the purpose > that hasn't been merged back into the FSF sources yet? There are a few issues which make the use of the NetBSD patches for the toolchain problematic. The NetBSD patches were developed for CMU based on the combined toolchain source that they get directly form Cygnus. CMU have not released those patches for incorporation in the FSF sources. To make matters worse, the patches were included in the FSF sources sometime last year, but removed at the request of the author when he complained. So where does that leave us? We'll be using the version of gcc that is currently in the tree (2.7.2.1) with the alpha config files added. There are two FreeBSD config files in there at present that need to be replaced by someone who develops a FreeBSD configuration without refering to the NetBSD patches. These new config files should also be submitted to NetBSD to allow them to solve their ownership mess. The important thing here is that the new config files are "new work" derived only from the existing (probably Linux) files. Either Peter Wemm or John Polstra (or someone else they nominate) will import (parts of) the GNU binutils release 2.8.1 (the latest one) and configure that for ELF on both i386 and alpha. They will consider all CVS issues related to that work. Phew. That work should happen sometime soon, subject to people's work load. Until then we can just use the NetBSD binaries except for gcc/cpp because we need the FreeBSD pre-defines. > Finally, would people object to my adding the 11 lines of code to > configure to make it grok the alpha-unknown-freebsd type so that > ./configure -target alpha-unknown-freebsd has a chance of working? Would you mind submitting that as a patch to either Peter Wemm or John Polstra and allow them to do the upgrade in the manner that they see fit. I guess you've noticed that the binutils stuff will default to COFF format if it doesn't recognise the operating system name. Jordan has a NetBSD/Alpha system available for anybody (?) who wants to work on this stuff. As for libc, I've sent a proposal for that to core and I'm waiting on [comments] { OK | NOTOK }. Regards, -- John Birrell - jb@cimlogic.com.au; jb@netbsd.org; jb@freebsd.org CIMlogic Pty Ltd, GPO Box 117A, Melbourne Vic 3001, Australia +61 418 353 137