Re: Feedback and Suggestions on GCC

[Phil Edwards <pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com>]

On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 03:08:42PM -0700, Davis, Roy wrote:
> My name is Roy Davis.  I currently work as a Senior Consultant at Compaq
> Computer Corporation, and worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for about
> 20 years prior to it's being acquired by Compaq.

Cool.  I cut my teeth on OSF/1.  Loved that OS.  Thanks for taking the
time to write to the list.


> *	First, I attempted to following the instructions at
> http://gcc.gnu.org/install/index.html.  This simply didn't work on a Windows
> 2000 Professional system.  I couldn't get past Step 2 (Configuration) of the
> installation procedure.  After downloading and unpacking the files specified
> in Step 1 (Download the source), I attempted to execute CONFIGURE.BAT as

configure.bat and its associated oddities were removed from the tree about
five months ago, probably for this reason.  We need to be able to safely
assume some basic tools to build.  I don't know whether building GCC under
NT&Co. directly is supported anymore, since there aren't enough tools to
count on (someone else will have to speak to that point).


> *	Second, I was able to follow the instructions for installing the
> "Cygwin" environment.  SETUP.EXE worked very well.  However, the environment
> it presented was [as stated in the instructions] purely UNIX oriented.
> Since Cygwin presented a command line interface, a Windows person would have
> liked to just simply start using basic Windows command-line commands such as
> CD, EDIT, etc.  A Windows person may not have the time or the inclination to
> learn a whole host of UNIX concepts and commands as mount points just to
> edit source code and run a compiler.

Just because the compiler needs to run inside Cygwin doesn't mean that
the user must do /all/ the work inside Cygwin.  I used to use some nice
Win32 graphical text editors and whatnot to actually create the code.
About the only thing I'd do in the Cygwin window/DOS-box is type "make".

(Is EDIT.COM even shipped anymore?  *looks*  Oh... that's disturbing. :-)


> with it.  Simply replace Step 2 and CONFIGURE as described above with a
> simple unpacking procedure that generates the required directory/folder tree
> with all the binaries already installed.  And then provide directions for
> setting up a few environment variables such as PATH, LIB, etc.  The notion
> that a typical applications programmer wants to configure and build a
> compiler, linker, and other related utilities from scratch is absurd.
> That's the sort of thing a systems programmer might want to do.  [I know,
> because I've done both systems programming and applications development.]

That's good, because we don't expect a typical applications programmer to
build the toolchain from scratch on Windows.  :-)

We provide source code; that's all.  Making precompiled binaries for Windows
or Linux or Darwin or Tru64 or Solaris or whatever is certainly allowed and
encouraged, but not a goal of gcc.gnu.org.  We provide links to people who
do create such packages off of the GCC homepage; for a Windows environment
it is expected that users would simply download Cygwin or something similar.


Phil

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pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com  |  pme at sources dot redhat dot com
devphil at several other less interesting addresses in various dot domains
The gods do not protect fools.  Fools are protected by more capable fools.