[Info-vax] What would you miss if DECnet got the chop? Was: "bad select 38" (OpenSSL on VMS)

[Chris]

On 09/20/16 21:41, Simon Clubley wrote:

> Let me guess: you've built gcc based cross compilers ? :-)
> Been there, done that, many times (both with RTOS targets and bare
> metal as well as normal native gcc builds) so I'm familiar with
> the issues involved unfortunately.
>

Yes, the last effort being for Cortex M3 with a Solaris 10 Sparc host.
Despite the requirement for all those odd math libraries that gcc
needs as part of the build, it actually built with little trouble, 
unlike some of the older versions, which could be hard work. It's
all about choosing the gcc version for the task in  hand, it seems.
Also, having the required gnu packages etc installed as well.

It's bit of a back burner project to have a remote network based
development environment available. Using OpenOCD for the remote
node, on a pc engines / alix board, Debian (10 ukp Ebay on a
good day), talking usb to a J-Link and thence to a the target jtag.
It means I can use any OS and machine to do development, example,
laptop in the house and the Sparc server in the lab. I'm quite
happy with Makefiles and gdb command line etc, but also looking
at netbeans for an ide, which is OS, fairly lightweight and multi
platform. Some ide environments, eg: eclipse, are just getting
too bloated and over the top these days. All things to all men
etc.

>>
>
> That's exactly how I tried to bootstrap the FSF gcc/binutils
> code base for VMS; I used Linux as the cross compiler host
> and tried a cross compiler build for VMS Alpha.
>
> I tried four of the gcc frontends when building the cross compiler:
> Ada, C, C++ and Fortran. C was the only one I was able to build
> usable VMS binaries for with the cross compiler. Both the Ada and
> C++ frontends failed to compile while building the cross compiler
> itself and a simple Fortran test program built but fell over during
> image activation (or very shortly afterwards; I can't remember).
>
> Simon.
>

Don't suppose you tried turning all optimisation off, or had a look
at the asm output ?.

Only needing C, haven't tried to build C++ or any of the others yet,
but the gcc version difference can have quite an effect...

Regards,

Chris