[fpc-pascal] Differences between ppc386 and ppcross386

[Jonas Maebe]

On 23 Feb 2015, at 11:40, Mattias Gaertner wrote:

> What are the differences between ppc386 and ppcross386?

ppcross386 gets compiled as part of a cross build (e.g. when  
performing "make all OS_TARGET=win32" on a Linux/i386 machine), but  
other than that it is the same as ppc386. The reason is that a cross  
build always compiles both a cross-compiler (a Linux/i386-native  
ppcross386 in the above scenario) and a native compiler for the target  
(a Win32/i386-native ppc386 in the above scenario), and obviously both  
binaries can't have the same name since they're both located in the  
compiler directory after buidling.

> Related question:
> When calling "fpc -Pi386" it searches for ppc386, but not for
> ppcross386. Why is that?

It will search for ppcross386 if the fpc binary has been compiled for  
an architecture that is not i386, except on Darwin. From fpc.pp:

{$ifndef darwin}
                            ppcbin:='ppcross'+cpusuffix;
{$else not darwin}
                            { the mach-o format supports "fat"  
binaries whereby }
                            { a single executable contains machine  
code for     }
                            { several architectures -> it is counter- 
intuitive  }
                            { and non-standard to use different binary  
names    }
                            { for cross-compilers vs. native  
compilers          }
                            ppcbin:='ppc'+cpusuffix;
{$endif not darwin}

In hindsight (the above is from 2008), I should have simply changed  
this for all platforms, because "fpc" is only used for installed  
compilers and it doesn't make sense to install both a native and cross- 
compiler into the same prefix (and even if you do, you'd still get  
binary name conflicts for e.g. an x86-64 -> ARM and an i386 -> ARM  
cross-compiler). It also causes confusion that build their own Darwin  
compiler, because make (cross)install will still install ppcross*  
(they are renamed by a script I use to package the official releases).


Jonas