[fpc-devel] Compiling for libgdb, and using make -j on larger SPARC systems

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:

>> It seems to be a bug in the Sparc code generator nevertheless, because 
>> the IDE compiles (not assembles/links though :P ) using a Sparc cross 
>> compiler...
> 
> But so far it appears to affect only this one bit of the compiler: 
> nothing else. If I were paranoid I'd be invoking Ken Thompson's 
> "Trusting Trust" paper http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
> 
> I'll put a bit more time on IDE+libgdb on various platforms, and might 
> look at slightly older versions on SPARC. In the past I've had it 
> running reasonably successfully on everything except ARM... which is an 
> unfortunate exception since the sort of alignment problems which affect 
> SPARC also affect at least some ARM variants.

On i386 Linux, 2.6.2 and 2.7.1 with libgdb 6.7.1 are OK.

On PPC (32-bit) Linux, 2.6.2 and 2.7.1 with libgdb 6.7.1 are OK.

The SPARC system I was using for test purposes lives under my desk and
runs an older version of Debian (Etch rather than Lenny or later), I was
avoiding powering anything else up because of heat issues. The linkage
errors appear to be caused by using libgdb 6.7.1 on this combination,
rather than the older 6.3.

2.4.2 and 2.4.4 are OK with libgdb 6.3, i.e. compilation and linkage are
successful but I've not exercised the debugger at runtime.

2.6.0 and later fail to compile with libgdb 6.3, giving the 
divide-by-zero error previously discussed.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]