RE: [RFC] 1.7 Packaging: Toolchain

["Dave Korn" <dave.korn@artimi.com>]

Yaakov (Cygwin Ports) wrote on 24 July 2008 06:26:

> 2) gcc
> 
> There are several issues to consider here:
> 
> a) _GLIBCXX_USE_WCHAR_T
> 
> Will std::wstring and friends be possible with cygwin-1.7?  If not, is
> there anything that can be done to make it possible?

  If the DLL supports it, then the autoconf tests should detect it and
libstdc++ should build it and everything should "just work".

 
> b) 3.4 vs. 4.3
> 
> I see little reason to work on gcc-4.3 for cygwin-1.5 at this point.

  Well, working on it for one is the same as working on it for the other
anyway.

> But this would be a great time to make the jump in release-2.  Dave, I
> know you're working on 4.3, so could you give us a status report?
> Besides wstring, what is the story with shared gcc libraries (libgcc,
> libstdc++, etc.)?

  I've got libgcc shared and working fine and correctly, either with a
separate static libgcc_eh, or with it shared, although that's only an option
if you also have shared libstdc++.

  Getting libstdc++ to work shared is being tricky; for some reason
libsupc++ is only built static, which means libtool links it into libstdc++
only to resolve imports, not as objects that need to be exported.  Removing
the --disable-shared libtool tag from libsupc++'s build configuration gets
me what appears to be a complete libstdc++, but it fails in early startup,
probably down to the relocs-in-.rodata issue; and that's where I've got to.
I'm not sure whether to just try and go for a shared-libstdc-static-libsupc
combo, or to try and figure out what needs to be fixed to prevent the relocs
problem - if indeed that's what it is.

> If either of these changes to gcc will be available (particularly 4.3
> and/or shared libs), then we'll want that version of gcc available in
> release-2 ASAP.

  That's my plan.

> c) -mno-cygwin
> 
> IMHO it's time for this insanity to end.  Too many 3PPs abuse Cygwin as
> if it were MSYS, and new users just seem to get confused by it.  I
> imagine it must make gcc that much harder to maintain as well.
> 
> What we should do is treat mingw32 as any other cross-compiling target,
> by providing i686-pc-mingw32-* binutils and gcc, and move
> /usr/{include,lib}/mingw to /usr/i686-pc-mingw32/ (currently these are
> symlinks).
> 
> It may not be a pressing issue itself, but while we're making changes
> anyway, isn't now the time?

  Famous last words.  Yes, that's the scheme we decided on some time ago,
but given how long it's already taking to get vanilla gcc4 working, I was
just going to leave that as it stands for now.

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....