From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25320 invoked by alias); 17 Apr 2002 08:59:55 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-help-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 25299 invoked from network); 17 Apr 2002 08:59:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO anchor-post-30.mail.demon.net) (194.217.242.88) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 17 Apr 2002 08:59:53 -0000 Received: from mailgate.softwire.co.uk ([62.49.203.138] helo=polarbear) by anchor-post-30.mail.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1) id 16xlI9-0008cp-0U; Wed, 17 Apr 2002 09:59:53 +0100 From: "Rupert Wood" To: "'Arpad Beszedes'" Cc: Subject: RE: How to contribute in the back end part Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 02:37:00 -0000 Message-ID: <616BE6A276E3714788D2AC35C40CD18D561654@whale.softwire.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal In-Reply-To: <616BE6A276E3714788D2AC35C40CD18D5B2776@whale.softwire.co.uk> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 X-SW-Source: 2002-04/txt/msg00176.txt.bz2 Arpad Beszedes wrote: > We would like to contribute to GCC by improving the ARM target > (cross-compiler). This work would involve some code optimization and > code generation issues. Most of the optimization code lives in the middle end, and there are already a few branched-projects which are attempting to improve this. If your optimizations aren't completely ARM-specific, then they might belong there instead. > I would like to ask for a good starting point to do this job. We are > completely new to GCC, so a tutorial-like document would be very > useful. Is there any other document beside the "GCC internals", > which could make us able to make useful contributions to GCC? > (Or is it the source code the only "real documentation"?) The manual is a good guide, but unfortunately it's out of date and/or wrong in a few places; the only source of "real documentation" is the code itself. There's a simpler introduction to the backend as part of Hans-Peter Nilsson's "Porting GCC for Dunces", which is top of the list on the further readings page: http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html If you'd like a gentler introduction to the GCC source then you can tackle any of the 'beginner' projects: http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/beginner.html but it may be easier to dive straight in to the backend. Finally, it may be worth talking to the ARM port maintainers (see the MAINTAINERS file in the GCC distribution) if there are complicated ARM-specific things that you'd like to do. If you'd like to submit your changes back for inclusion in release GCC then you'll need to complete a copyright assignment; you can find the details here: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-08/msg01142.html Rup.