gcc and Altivec (was: gcc for MacOS X)

[stevenj at gil-galad dot mit dot edu]

David Young <dyoung at vviuh221 dot vvi dot com> wrote:
>I don't think there is a binary, but there is source at the darwin site 
>at Apple. I don't know the current state of that, pieces seem to go in
>and out of NDA (non-disclosure) status as Apple plays with what they
>think Open Source is.

You can download a patched version of egcs from publicsource.apple.com
with AltiVec support; it doesn't seem to be under NDA (which I don't think
they could apply to GPL-derived work even if they wanted to).

Unfortunately, this version has ripped the ordinary build-process to
shreds, so that it only builds (easily) on MacOS X Server.  (I don't know
why they didn't just adapt the autoconf build process to their needs,
since the OS is built on BSD...sigh, what a mess.)  I have been playing
with it this evening trying to compile it under LinuxPPC, and have only
been able to compile parts of it so far (cc1, xgcc, cpp...).

>Talking about Open Source, has Apple or Moto released copyright to their
>Altivec modifications to egcs yet ?????? what is the story there?

I second this question!  Michael Meissner <meissner at cygnus dot com>
posted to this list back in October that he had Motorola's changes and was
waiting for the copyright assignment, but no one has posted any news since
then.

Let us know if there is any person or forum at Apple or Motorola that we
can contact to encourage them to speed up this process!

Cordially,
Steven G. Johnson