Re: Patch to make trunk compile on m68k-next-nextstep3 with 3 = 3.2

["Melissa O'Neill" <oneill at cs dot sfu dot ca>]

Jeff wrote:
> [...] how easy is it to get [the NEXTSTEP 3.3] assembler?
>
> Ie, I'm sitting here with my 3.2 box, I don't have 3.3 or 4.2 handy, and from
> what I can tell the binutils releases do not support my target.  So how do I
> upgrade?  Is there some source or binaries I can ftp?  If so, where are they?
> Can I call up NeXT to get the code?  If so, is there something specific I
> should ask for?

If no one beats me to it, I should have got sources and binaries put on
the major NEXTSTEP archive sites within the next week or so. Right now,
those archive sites are a little behind -- no one has updated their
archives of ``free stuff from NeXT'' since OS 3.2.  (I'm putting this
down to a peculiar form of apathy, because the source is right there on
every developer CD-ROM.).

Most people should prefer the free copies of NeXT's binaries. Although
it is possible to recompile the assembler from the source NeXT provides,
it's tricky in practice (i.e., you can't just type make: you need to
fiddle with the Makefiles a little -- I don't know whether the sources
shipped on the 4.2 CD are any better, since I don't have 4.2 and no one
has put the sources up for ftp).

> Checking would be fairly simple.  We just cobble up a testfile, and
> try to assemble it.  If gas chokes, then we don't have a new enough
> assembler.
>
> What gets tricky is once we know our assembler is lame, how do we make
> things work?  Presumably we can disable the new code via some well
> placed ifdefs?

One approach is to not define FRAME_SECTION_ASM_OP when the assembler
doesn't grok it, and then have code conditionally depend on that.

Another approach might be to have two targets (e.g.m m68-next-nextstep32
for pre 3.3 and m68-next-nextstep33 for 3.3) and then use the code we
originally developed that enabled collect2.

Of these, I'd say the latter looks like the right choice to me.

     Melissa.

P.S. NeXT's assembler, while based on gas, is actually installed as
/bin/as. A minor point, but possibly a useful one if you're writing
tests for configure.

P.P.S. The two major NeXT ftp sites are ftp://ftp.next.peak.org/pub/next
and ftp://peanuts.leo.org/pub/next , with mirrors in various places.