[M3devel] Build Server - Plan

[microcode at zoho.com]

On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 10:11:15AM +0000, Jay K wrote:
> Autoconf output has little/none dependency.Sun's SPARC optimization are
> mostly irrelevant as we have little C code,unless you use the C backend. 

Ok, well, it sounds like it will be increasingly important as you go to your
C backend though.

>  > somewhat of a test of C portability 
> This I appreciate. We have some C code and the C backend.More compilers
> have "helped".The Tru64 compiler was another.On HP-UX in-box I had only
> K&R so resorted to gcc (Including bootstrapping through gcc 3.x;see
> m3-sys/m3cc/src/m3makefile...)We work with Microsoft Visual C++ too.And
> now clang -- having found and worked around a bug in its assembler.Some
> time soon I'll expand to Metrowerks and Digital Mars.. 

I have the Intel C/C++ and Fortran compilers on a Linux box but I don't have
the latest versions. C/C++ are not my thing but if I can help by just
building stuff to see what messages we get or if it breaks etc. let me know
and I will try to participate.

I didn't know Metrowerks was still around. I thought they got swallowed up
by Motorola and then removed from all the non-embedded space.


>  - Jay
> 
> 
> > Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2015 08:24:09 +0000
> > From: microcode at zoho.com
> > To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
> > Subject: Re: [M3devel] Build Server - Plan
> > 
> > On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 07:52:13AM +0000, Jay K wrote:
> > > The output of autoconf/automake should have lightweight dependencies.They
> > > might stress make, might require GNU make.They might stress the sh, but I
> > > think there are adequate shells out there. 
> > 
> > That is typically one issue with autoconf, requiring gnu tools in the
> > path. On Solaris this can be annoying since most Solaris people don't use
> > gcc or bash or have them in their path and not all (none of?) the gnu pieces
> > are up to date or even current by any stretch of the imagination.
> > 
> > > They are meant to be easy for people building stuff to use.They aren't
> > > meant to be easy for people developing stuff to use. 
> > 
> > Not sure what you meant here...
> > 
> > > Look at this way..while people complain and there are widelyused
> > > alternatives like cmake, autoconf/automake are in widespreaduse, and they
> > > do provide things that work for Linux, Solaris, BSD, MacOSX, Cygwin,HPUX,
> > > Aix, Irix, etc. 
> > 
> > They often don't "work" for Solaris as-installed but they can most often be
> > made to work. Increasingly, as automake and its prereqs get version bumps
> > there are problems building apps on Solaris because Solaris installs with a
> > very back-level version of gcc and a rather incomplete set of gnu tools. I
> > ran into a problem with the last year where Solaris awk was not good enough
> > to install(!) an app that compiled on Solaris as part of autotools so I had
> > to download a newish copy of gawk and install it. So really, it is much
> > better not to go there if you can avoid it.
> > 
> > I am not suggesting an alternative to autotools but just pointing out it is
> > not really accurate to say they work on Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc. except for
> > Linux. I also run BSD on several platforms and because of the same issues as
> > with Solaris (old copy of gcc and gnu tools and POSIX-compliant awk, sed,
> > shells, etc. not being good enough for autotools) it is sometimes
> > non-trivial and painful to get Linux apps built on BSD. There is obviously
> > no good/easy solution to this, just to point out it is not the slam-dunk as
> > might be thought. 
> > 
> > > Furthermore, consider any platform that has a native gcc, is likely
> > > buildingthat with autoconf/automake.
> > 
> > Conceded, yet on Solaris it is not clear why gcc is there. It is old and it
> > is in a non-standard location and is often not used. Ideally, apps to be run
> > on Solaris should be able to be built with native (non-gnu) tools. The
> > Studio compilers are very good and have optimizations for SPARC that should
> > be better than what gcc can provide and it is also somewhat of a test of C
> > portability since Studio doesn't necessarily provide all non-standard gcc
> > extensions.
> > 
> > 
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>  		 	   		  

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