Is GPC dead?

[John L. Ries]

That's pretty much what I was looking for on the subject of "how to get
GPC to compile with a given version of GCC".  Thanks.

--------------------------|
John L. Ries              |
Salford Systems           |
Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 |
or     (435)867-8885      |
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On Thu, 29 Dec 2016, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> John L. Ries wrote:
> >
> > It would be nice if we could find something on the website more recent
> > than 2005 (perhaps a changelog and links to the current codebase); maybe
> > some instructions on how to get GPC to compile with GCC 5 and 6, or at
> > least a sense of how one would go about creating the necessary patches to
> > the latter.
>
> I a sense porting process is simple (or you may call it primitive):
> first put gpc files into gcc tree and try to apply as much of patches
> to older gcc as applies.  Then try to compile, this will produce
> tons of errors.  Form the errors see what changed in gcc and adapt
> gpc to the change.  In current gpc source there are a conditionals
> which choose version of gpc code apropriate for given gcc version,
> but during porting one can work with single version and add
> conditionals later.  After sevaral iterations one should obtain
> compilable version.  Then run testsuite and fix regressions.
>
> Finding out what exactly needs to be changed is important part
> of the work.  For example when some gcc function used by gpc
> is missing one needs to find out how to handle this.  Sometimes
> function is no longer needed and one may simply delete the call.
> Sometimes there is a rename and one has to use new name.  Sometimes
> there is a deeper change.  To know what to do it is helpful to
> look at gcc change logs and at parts of C compiler parallel to
> Pascal compiler.
>
> > Personally, I would be overjoyed if I had some time to contribute to GPC
> > development, but I work too many hours at my regular job to consider it at
> > the present time; but perhaps there are some small things that some of us
> > could do to move things along at the rate of an hour or two a week per
> > person.
>
> Concerning adapting to newer gcc: this is probably about one man-month
> per gcc version.  It is poorly decomposable problem: there are interactions
> with earlier step and it is important to use facts established in
> earlier steps in subsequent steps.  If you make long break you
> are likely to forget things and re-do discovery work.
> Actually, discovery work for single problem is likely to take
> more than two hours, so if you literally mean two hours per
> week (as opposed to say a weeked per quater) than you will have
> trouble making any progress.  Also given that new versions
> appear yearly at slow speed you will end up with port to newer,
> but still obsolete gcc version.
>
> --
>                               Waldek Hebisch
>
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