Re: Package building

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Bertrand,

Bertrand Dekoninck wrote:
> 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.

I have progress here, since in the past year I spent again quite some 
time on PPC, given my affiliation with the Power Progress Community 
("PPC" :-) )
- G3 iBook Clamshell (yaboot)
- G4 iBook (yaboot)
- G4 PowerBook (GRUB)

I use GCC only and the GCC runtime there. I did not even attempt 
something else. I am experimenting with gcc 6.5 (which is now not 
present in latest Debian versions, I keep the old .deb ) as well testing 
gcc7 and gcc8. I use cairo as backend on all of them.

The only big annoyance is the breakage of the bootloader (yaboot being 
obsolescent, but works well on my iBook) and GRUB of which the 
installation is broken and needs to be manually tweaked in a painful 
way, but then works on several macs (more modern ones).
Alsop the wireless setup needs some manual work, but can be done (old 
packages need to be retrieved, no longer available)

GNUstep works very well with GCC on PPC hardware currently. I don't 
noticed any "bugs" differing from a comparable x86 or amd64 setup! Our 
code is still quite good in this regard. Other applications suck more (tm).

I have a working setup with working X11. Both iBook work nicely in this 
regard. The PowerBook instead has a strange mouse issue, but with an 
external mouse it works.

GWorkspace, GNUMail, PRICE.. LaternaMagica.. everything works decently. 
I use WindowMaker.

For Browser, on "powerful" enough machines, you can use ArcticFox! But 
there are currently no available packages for it. And it is off-topic 
for the GNUstep world.

Riccardo