Re: UPDATED DRAFT -- Toolchain upgrade plan

Jason R Thorpe <[email protected]> writes:

> First of all, it is imporant to note that the 3 major toolchain components
> (GCC, Binutils, and GDB) all support ns32k-netbsd out of the box, but only
> for statically linked executables.

I have fixes for a couple of GCC ICE errors for gcc 3.1+. The in tree
ld.new works for static linking, but the in tree gas.new has what
looks like incomplete support for PIC code, which prevents it
building. Commenting some stuff out gets it to build, and mostly
working. However, building using the in (netbsd) tree gas.new and
ld.new cause multiply defined typeinfo symbols building groff
(c++). I'm not sure which is the culprit (gas or ld or maybe bfd) but
the current FSF binutils does not have this problem.

> required for continued inclusion in the GDB source tree).  IF WE WANT TO
> CONTINUE TO SUPPORT NS32K, SOMEONE NEEDS TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND DO
> THE NECESSARY WORK ON THE TOOLCHAIN.  I simply cannot stress this enough.

I intend to contribute some binutils cosmetic changes (to eliminate
warnings) and and the gcc changes as soon as I have them properly
tested (but it is looking good). The gcc changes can be back ported fairly
easilly to 3.1 or 3.1.1, or even 2.95 though the bigger the "gap" the more
chance that it is not a complete fix.

What is missing is PIC/ELF support. My feeling is we may as well go to
ELF rather than try and add PIC support for the a.out version. I'm
happy to continue to look after gcc, but I'm not sure that I have the
time to do the ELF support, especially as I would have to come up to
speed on ELF.

Ian