RE: Contributing to cross-compiling

["Rodrigo Dominguez" <roddomi at hotmail dot com>]

Thanks for your suggestions.

It seems like the best place to start for someone new to GCC would be the
beginners projects off from the GCC Projects webpage
(http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/beginner.html). I think I will start from there
and then try to move to the cross-compiling area.

Thanks again for the links. They were helpful.

Rodrigo 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Lance Taylor [mailto:iant@google.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 4:09 PM
To: Rodrigo Dominguez
Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org
Subject: Re: Contributing to cross-compiling

"Rodrigo Dominguez" <roddomi@hotmail.com> writes:

> I am PhD student in Computer Engineering. I would like to contribute to
GCC
> and at the same time learn more about cross-compilers. I have taken a
couple
> of compiler classes and I can program in C. However, I am not familiar
with
> the GCC internals. Do you have any suggestions on a project related to
> cross-compiling that I could start with? Perhaps cross-compiling for the
> XScale/ARM target?

Thanks for your interest.

There are a number of general projects for gcc.  Google's Summer of
Code is not running right now, but the wiki page for it points to a
number of lists of open projects:

http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode

Most of those are not specifically related to cross-compiling, but of
course improvements to the general compiler will improve all targets.

The ARM target is in pretty good shape in general.  However, I do know
that the code size is not as good as that generated by ARM's
proprietary compiler.  So that would an area to investigate.

Also a quick bugzilla search for ARM turns up a number of open bug
reports.  I haven't looked at these at all so I don't know how
relevant they are.

http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_typ
e=allwordssubstr&short_desc=ARM&known_to_fail_type=allwordssubstr&known_to_w
ork_type=allwordssubstr&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_typ
e=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&gcchost_type=allwordssubstr&gcchost=&gcctarge
t_type=allwordssubstr&gcctarget=&gccbuild_type=allwordssubstr&gccbuild=&keyw
ords_type=allwords&keywords=&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_statu
s=ASSIGNED&bug_status=SUSPENDED&bug_status=WAITING&bug_status=REOPENED&email
assigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporte
r2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes
=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sor
t+as+last+time&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=

Hope this helps.

Ian