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<body class='hmmessage'><div style="text-align: left;">I'm going to be rude and just throw this out there at a time when I probably can't discuss it or yet have enough data/diffs to matter.<br><br>However, in building NT386GNU -- I can build libm3 and m3core -- the question arises as to if this target is "win32" or "posix'.<br>Currently in the tree it is setup to be "posix", with a fair amount of work already done in that direction -- in particular, the Unix interfaces.<br><br>However, I think this target is potentially an odd beast. Potentially it is two targets.<br>I guess this mimics cygwin vs. mingwin. Exactly.<br><br>The "host" is gcc. In order to build this system, one needs "gmake", sh, gcc probably (I'm assuming Visual C++'s compiler/linker cannot build m3cg, but very maybe..).<br><br>In order to build anything with this system, one needs "as", and most likely ld.<br> (I quote "as" because it is an English word and confusing to read otherwise.)<br>Changing it to output assembly for masm or even Visual C++'s inline __asm is probably actually viable, but not a tiny short term task.<br>(Or maybe writing an as clone that outputs .objs? Maybe using nasm/yasm??? Not sure the point, maybe "as" is perfectly ok.)<br><br>And then the question arises as to what it takes to run the output.<br>As I've said in other topics, the C runtime dependency of Modula-3 is light -- startup code mainly, but, yeah, also important setjmp/longjmp, and multiplication/division helpers sometimes. This could perhaps all be statically linked. Certainly for Visual C++ it can be.<br>(NOTE: The Cygwin jmp_buf is much larger than Visual C++'s. A THOUGHT is to grow them to the same, for object code compatibility, but probably not useful, and very wasteful, Cygwin's is much larger, the data in the existing code I verified is correct, like 0x40 vs. 0xD0 I think it was, I just did printf("%x", sizeof(jmp_buf)).)<br><br>To get m3core to build, I switched NT386GNU to use Win32 threads.<br>For THAT to build, I switched OSTYPE to Win32. Overkill perhaps, in order to get the Win32 *.i3 files.<br>Overkill perhaps, but it does build.<br><br>I fully suspect that old style Posix threads can work easily, and that pthreads can work easily, increasing the dependency on cygwin1.dll.<br>While this is the "other" direction, given the dependency on as, and gcc to build m3cg, probably the horse is out of the barn.<br>This is arguably a simpler answer, less hybrid.<br><br>I think the analogy to cygwin/mingwin holds, possibly perfectly.<br><br>Maybe this is two targets.<br> NT386CYGWIN ? <br> NT386MINGWIN ? <br><br>(Which begs the point -- target naming.... NT386 vs. PPC_LINUX...OS+ARCH vs. ARCH + _ + OS, etc... but ARCH and OS aren't it, there is toolchain and C runtime in the mix..)<br><br>Obviously SOMETHING is better than NOTHING and I have no useful binary distribution yet to show, so these questions are all very premature.<br><br>I'm also unsure as to the "seriousness" of using the GNU tools.<br>a) There don't seem to be many users of Modula-3 on Win32.<br>b) Will such users accept/trust a non Microsoft toolchain?<br>(Just what to do folks do with cygwin/mingwin? Build/ship real software?)<br><br>From my point of view, the attractive thing about m3cg is I get the int64 stuff arguably out of the way easier. :)<br><br>Licensing wise..probably a dependency on cygwin1.dll is not desirable.<br><br>When I'm further along, er, actually, with my existing libm3.dll/m3core.dll, I can see what the dependencies are.<br>If it's just setjmp/lonjmp/memset, maybe try static linking (what is the licensing of that?) or link to msvcr*.dll.<br><br>Maybe see if I can configure to use mingwin to compile/link except for m3cc. That sounds excellent.<br>You would configure a CYGWIN_ROOT (gcc, ld, make, sh, libs) and a MINGWIN_ROOT (gcc, ld, libs). CYGWIN_ROOT would be required for building m3cc, and either could be used for building anything else. ?? That seems good, though I just thought of it, need more time to think and investigate.<br><br>Later..<br> - Jay<br></div><br><br /><hr />Share life as it happens with the new Windows Live. <a href='http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008' target='_new'>Start sharing!</a></body>
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