*BSD News Article 18827


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!haven.umd.edu!uunet!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!paul
From: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul)
Subject: Re: Compiling Kernel with GCC-2: How, exactly?
Message-ID: <1993Jul22.100311.24391@cm.cf.ac.uk>
Sender: news@cm.cf.ac.uk (Network News System)
Organization: Intelligent Systems Lab, ELSYM, University of Wales, Cardiff
References: <1993Jul22.011943.26148@husc14.harvard.edu>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 10:03:09 +0000
Lines: 67

In article <1993Jul22.011943.26148@husc14.harvard.edu> haley@husc10.harvard.edu (Elizabeth Haley) writes:
>HiHo:
>
>I know this is becoming a FAQ, so I will take replies to this and
>shove them together and send it to Dave for inclusion in the FAQ:
>
>What needs to be done to 386bsd0.1+pk2.4 to make the kernel compile
>with GCC-2.4.5? 
>
>Please answer very specificly.

A lot, so much that it would take me all morning to type it in.

You can find the patches needed in the from-ref archives by ljo. They
use the pragma pack fix but if you want a quick job then go look there.
I wouldn't bother though, see below. If you don't understand the issues
around the pragma fix then I wouldn't advise trying to do this upgrade.

>
>Could patches be put in to the kit to make the kernel compile? If the
>problem is in GCC, perhaps a patch could be made to make whatever
>modifications are necessary, to be distributed outside of the
>patchkit...

As you may have noticed by now, there will be no more patchkits. The
FreeBSD release, is going to be out early August (that's an actual
date there not a sometime soon announcement).

It replaces the patchkit and is a release based on stability rather than
features, that's not to say there's nothing new in it but everything
that's been added has been thoroughly tested.

One of the changes is that the whole system is compilable with gcc2 so
my advice would be to wait a few weeks and then upgrade to FreeBSD.

>
>In a related question, when will GCC-2 be included as the regular
>compiler?
>

The FreeBSD release will be shipped with BOTH gcc1 and gcc2. The gcc1
compiler is the default cc compiler but gcc2 is also installed as gcc so
you can choose which you want to use by simply changing the compiler
name. This was done because some memners of the FreeBSD team felt that
gcc2 may not as yet have proven itself to be bug free. In addition gcc1
is a lot faster than gcc2, for example on freefall gcc1 took 266s to
compile the kernel and gcc2 took 442s.

Anyway, there'll be both so you can choose yourself. At some point in
the future, when gcc2 is deemed stable gcc1 will be deprecated.

Also, g++ has been deprecated because it was far too buggy. Instead g++
is now a script that runs gcc2, which has better c++ support.

>I am assuming this will happen as part of a major release, and not as
>a patchkit, since the sources for GCC-2.4.5 are HUGE!

You're right on the first count. The sources for gcc2 shipped with
FreeBSD are ~9Mb, a lot smaller than stock gcc2 because only the sources
needed for the compiler are included and not all the configuration and
other stuff that comes with gcc2. Although 9Mb is still a big it's not
that much of an increase since the g++ sources are gone.
-- 
  Paul Richards, University of Wales, College Cardiff

  Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk
	    spedpr@thor.cf.ac.uk