Build instructions

[Pietro Monteiro]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026, at 1:25 AM, chris hermansen wrote:
> Good day everyone,
>
> Yesterday, following Piero's advice, I cloned the source tree from GCC 
> rather than the forge and then ran a build (first time with non-forge 
> build).
>
> A few observations:
>
> - the build instructions at https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Algol68FrontEnd relate
>   to working with the forge version; I see there is a similar set in
>   gcc/gcc/algol68/README (once you have the source tree in place)
>   but it lacks steps for building docs, running tests; could we offer a
>   more full example on the wiki for using with the GCC source tree,
>   including the URL for git clone?

Besides the wiki A68 page, the documentation on building GCC also has a
page on testing: https://gcc.gnu.org/install/

> - I seem to recall comments about using a parallel make process; is that
>   a good idea?

Yes, I usually do `make -j$(nproc)` or nproc-2 if I want to keep using my
laptop while building GCC.

> - ../configure suggested another flag for me as I don't have i386 stuff
>   installed on my machine, which was handy and maybe should be
>   mentioned in the instructions

Are you on a x86_64 system? I always build with multilibs enabled because
that’s the easiest way to build/test 32-bit builds without using qemu or some
remote setup.

> - maybe it was because I wasn't building with i386 but my build ran
>   in much less time than my first build from the forge source tree.  I
>   found this surprising, but no error messages hinting as to why.

Did you disable bootstrap? A full bootstrap will build GCC at least 3 times.

> I would be happy to write a first draft to address what I mentioned 
> above, if anyone is interested, instead of just asking others to do it 
> for me.  Please let me know!

Please do!

> -- 
> Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com
>
> C'est ma façon de parler.

Pietro