Re: porting

[Joe Buck <jbuck@racerx.synopsys.com>]

> (1) what platforms is Gcc known to have been successfully ported to ? (and 
> could you put it on the web page please), and

This is a question that it is hard to give a precise answer to.

gcc has been ported to a vast number of platforms, including a number
of platforms that no longer even exist.  The less-used platforms
tend to suffer from bit rot and so cannot be assumed to work.

On the page http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-2.95/regress.html you can find a list
of the platforms for which gcc 2.95.x has been thoroughly tested.
However, there are many more backends than are listed there.  Cygnus and
other companies provide support for many GCC embedded-platform backends
for their customers, so the code for them can considered to be reasonably
solid for popular processors.

For more information on what backends exist and what the options for
controlling them are, see the "Hardware Models and Configurations"
section of the GCC manual, online at

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc_2.html#SEC18

> (2) in the case that I were to develop a new hardware platform, what would 
> be the best way to go about porting Gcc to that platform ? Is it something 
> which the FSF/GNU would want to take charge of ? or, if I were to do it 
> myself what coding conventions etc should I follow?

It would be up to you or your organization to do the port, or you could
hire someone to do it for you.  See http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html
for more on the requirements for contributions.

Please also read http://gcc.gnu.org/contributewhy.html .