Re: Cross-compiler for HURD/Alpha?

[Jeff Bailey]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 10:49:45PM -0600, Andrew M. Miklic wrote:

> I have tried to follow the instructions for building a
> cross-compiler from the HURD homepage, but I tried to download the
> lastest (3.0.4) instead of 2.95.2, and I can find no reference
> anywhere (in the config* files, either in the 2.95.2 or the 3.0.4
> gcc source) to building the HURD as a target ($arch-gnu)--is 2.95.2
> the only distribution to contain code to cross-compile the HURD, or
> should I be able to start with 3.0.4?

All of the compilers from at least 2.95 (including the 3.x series)
support cross-compiling to i386-pc-gnu.

Bootstrapping is hard, though.  Generally noone cares to go through it
enough times that it gets correctly documented.

I would recommend starting with the 3.0.4 release.  You can compile
everything but the actual Oskit libraries with it.

> Also, should anything specific need to be done to support a target
> of a different architecture target for the HURD (i.e., alpha-gnu),
> and if so, what?

I've never tried this, but here's a quick brainstorm of pieces you
might have to touch:

1) Gcc, to tell it that alpha-*-gnu is a valid target.  This shouldn't
be hard, since we're just a variant of *-linux-gnu most of the time.

2) Binutils.  This should also be easy, since we're just a variant of
*-elf.

3) Glibc already seems to recognise *-gnu* (in configure).  There's
already a sysdeps/mach/hurd/alpha directory, so perhaps you will be
lucky here.

4) The Hurd sources apparently already run on PPC.  I don't know off
hand if that means that we're treating all of our pointers nicely
enough that alpha can take it without any big deal.

5) *mach.  Since roland made some commits to the GLibc CVS (HEAD) on
2002-04-08, this might mean that there's a Mach out there that already
does what you need.

6) Mig.  I've never looked at this code.

Tks,
Jeff Bailey