Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/05/04/07:15:37
On Sat, 3 May 1997, Kai Ruottu wrote:
> A couple of years ago I rebuilt gcc-2.4.5 (or some other
> 2.4.x-version) in a DOS-box for djgpp. That was tough enough and
> since that I have always used a UNIX-to-go32 cross-compiler when
> building gcc as a go32-hosted cross-compiler.
Past trauma is not always the best guide for present decisions. 2.4.5
was a *long* time ago. DJGPP v2 is much more POSIX- and UNIX-compatible,
and the ported GNU tools now make for a very Unix-like environment.
> There is nothing wrong with DJGPP, emx or cygwin32, but DOS, 95, NT or
> OS/2 don't behave like UNIX. Configure and makefiles for gcc,
> binutils, libg++ etc. are made for UNIX. And building compilers for
> other hosts is thought to be done by cross-compiling with the Canadian
> Cross method. Not too much pain...
I disagree. Building a cross-compiler, even with GCC, is nowhere as
easy as you make it sound. Of course, after you have done that a few
times, the n+1 time is a piece of cake. But so is building GCC on
MS-DOS. The question is: what is easier when you do that the first
time?
> Perhaps some day DJ gets DOS, Cygnus gets NT & 95, and Eberhard & Co.
> get OS/2 behave just like UNIX,
That already works. I'm routinely running GNU configure scripts for
several months now, using the DJGPP port of Bash and the auxiliary
tools from v2gnu directory on SimTel.NET.
> but just using UNIX is so much easier
This is arguable. UNIX is not at all easy to manage. DOS is so much
smaller and simpler (and of course much more stupid, but that's
another point) that being your own system manager is not so painful.
For example, what in DOS is done by simple editing of CONFIG.SYS,
requires rebuilding the kernel in many UNIX flavors.
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