OSLib Unix-build

[Tony van der Hoff]

I have re-commenced the port of the OSLib build environment to Linux; all
well so far, thanks to Philip and Dave for their input.

For those who want to watch this develop, I have created a branch on the
SourceForge tree (unix_build), but there's nothing new in there yet :-)

It looks to me like we'll have 4 different build environments:
(1) RISC OS using Acorn C V5;  
(2) RISC OS using GCC; 
(3) Solaris with (I think) ARMSDK as used by Pace;  
(4) Linux using GCC.

Of these, (1) is the "traditional" way of building OSLib. However, I'm
finding the limitions of that version of AMU increasingly frustrating, the
more so as I try to keep common make files between the environments. I
therefore propose to abandon support for this environment in favour of
Castle's new tools. Does anyone have any strong feelings about this?

We have covertly (and arguably not very well) supported (2) for a long time.
I think it's time to come out of the closet, and openly support it; I don't
think it'll make much difference to the development team, but I believe the
RISC OS GCC project is now sufficiently mature to become the environment of
choice for many users.

Stewart Brodie started the ball rolling for (3) with the port of DefMod. It's
not a full build environment, as it does not generate the StrongHelp files.
I'm not sure how much this is used nowadays, but it's only polite to continue
to support this one as much as we can; unfortunately we do not have Solaris 
available for testing, so I suspect that it'll drift into disuse without =20
help from someone at Pace.

I've started work on (4). This is really a development on (3). Philip Ludlam
did some early investigations in January, and his comments have been very
useful. The main differences between this task, and that done for (3) is the
use of a different assembler by DefMod, and the need for ports of the Help
generator utilities. The first is easily overcome; for the second, Dave Ruck,
has made available some "OSLib in C" utilities which, together with Stewart's
similar work, should make the task relatively easy.

Has anyone got any comments so far?

Cheers, Tony


-- 
Tony van der Hoff         | MailTo:tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk
                          | MailTo:avanderhoff at iee.org
Buckinghamshire, England  | http:www.mk-net.demon.co.uk