[fpc-pascal] AIX Port

[Jonas Maebe]

On 19 Aug 2010, at 20:37, Refr Bruhl wrote:

> I would like to use fpc for some heavy batch processing with database 
> connectivity to db2 on an aix platform
> 
> I'd rather stay binary than go byte code.
> 
> What would it take to get a port of FPC working and stable for AIX?

At the very least: an ssh account on an AIX machine with GCC (to compile test programs), GNU make and the GNU binutils installed, and about 3GB of disk quota.

Getting a basic port working shouldn't be too hard, since we support both PowerPC 32/64 and the AIX abi already (Mac OS X also uses it). First, a bunch of C headers will have to be translated to Pascal for the run time library, and then there will probably be some idiosyncrasies regarding the format of the assembler output, importing variables and functions from dynamic libraries, and dynamic library initialisation code, but all in all it should be reasonably straightforward.

Getting it stable (as in: useful for commercial work), and especially keeping it stable over time, is another matter though.


Jonas