Can I get GCC on an Altos 1000

[Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR]

As quoted from <4650 at altos86.Altos.COM> by ti at altos86.Altos.COM (Ti Kan):
+---------------
| In article <1991Jan10.172451.23966 at bradley.bradley.edu> john at bradley.bradley.edu (John Lengeling) writes:
| >I have an Altos 1000 running System V 5.3.1e and I would like to
| >get a C compiler for it.  Would GCC work?  If so, is there someone
| >who can send me the binaries or am I out of luck and have to buy a C
| >compiler?
| 
| Altos offers the Altos System V Development System package 
+---------------

This would have been more appropriate via mail....

+---------------
| I don't know if anyone has tried gcc on the System 1000, if anyone
| has I would like to know.
+---------------

I have.  Gcc works fine on the Altos 500/600/1000/2000 when compiled with the
settings for 386/ix.  However, gdb doesn't seem to like them too much; I gave
up on making it work.

In any case, I include a summary of what I said in *my* mail to John:

Having a C compiler isn't enough.  To build a program, you need not only a
compiler, assembler, and linker (all available from the FSF if you don't mind
the GNU General Public Virus) but also a library of system calls and C
standard library functions (like stdio) and the header files to match.  The
FSF hasn't come up with a full C library yet, and they *certainly* wouldn't
have system call libraries that would work on a System V/386 system.

Worse, the GNU ld won't work with System V libraries, due to a bad case of NIH
on the part of whoever wrote it:  rather than learn how to use COFF, they put
a minimal COFF wrapper around a BSD executable.  This wrapper is created only
around executables; object files (including those in archives) are in BSD
format and therefore incompatible with any other library on the system.  (Oh,
sure, there's a converter to turn COFF objects into BSD objects, but it dies
on anything with .init and .dnit segments.  These segments are used to provide
the functionality that the FSF claims is missing from COFF and thereby
requires GNU ld to be used with g++.  Go figure.)

++Brandon
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