Minimum OS required to build GCC

[Oleg Endo]

On Fri, 2013-08-16 at 09:46 +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
> On 08/16/2013 07:29 AM, tom wrote:
> > This may be a bit of a daft question but I'm wondering what the minimum 
> > requirements for an OS to run GCC:
> > I'm getting a parallella board and it seems sort of logical to try and 
> > use it to do compiles as well. I used to run GCC on a 4MByte 386 so it 
> > seems feasible.
> 
> It's been a while since I looked, and I don't think anyone really knows.
> GCC is much fatter than it used to be: for example, we parse everything
> into trees and keep all of them around during compilation.  So, I'm
> pretty sure that running GCC in a few megabytes isn't going to work.

I've got an old LinkStation, 400 MHz MIPS CPU, 64 MB RAM (16 bit bus
AFAIK -- ouch), runs Linux 2.4 and GCC.  I haven't checked the details,
but it's probably a good idea to have some swap space available.
Compiling GCC itself on the thing works as well of course, but it takes
about 2 or 3 days.

> I'm getting a parallella board and it seems sort of logical to try
> and 
> use it to do compiles as well.

Why is that logical?  I guess the more common way is to use a cross
compiler on a standard PC.  In the case of the Parallella you might need
two cross compilers (one for ARM, one for Epiphany).  Of course you can
run GCC on it if it comes with Linux.  If it doesn't have swap and the
programs you want to compile are too big it will just run out of memory.
If it doesn't run Linux, then things might be a bit more complicated...

Cheers,
Oleg