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D.gnu - GDC for ARM

reply brad beveridge <brad nowhere.com> writes:
Hi guys, I've seen this post 
(http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/D/gnu/600.html) which suggests 
that a GDC cross compiler for ARM can be created.  I can build a 
"vanilla" arm-linux toolchain, patch gdc into it and succesfully build 
gdc & phobos.  But I get weird errors when I try to use arm-linux-gdc to 
compile & link.  I can't remember especially, and don't have the logs 
with me.
Can somebody give me some hints on what binutils/gcc/linux combination 
can be used to produce a working arm-linux-gdc?
Any particular hints in general?  I think I am just going to build an 
x86 gdc first off, to get to grips with some of the GDC issues - but I 
would quite like to get the compiler working for ARM.

Cheers
Brad
Jan 26 2005
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <z a.a> writes:
I've been trying occasionall to do that too, but specifically with DevKitARM 
(http://www.devkit.tk).  (I don't know how useful that would be for your 
purposes though, since DevKitARM is designed specifically for GBA and 
Gamecube, and not "general" ARM use). Once I finally got my MSYS/MinGW 
environment *correctly* set up it was pretty easy to add the D front end 
into it. I never tried building Phobos though, so I was unable to use 
classes or anything particularly useful. I've been kinda scared off of 
compiling Phobos for DevKitARM because of the garbage collection code. I've 
been waiting for the new simpified garbage collector that's supposed to be 
coming to GDC soon.

But, I've since found out that it's easy to rip the gc out of Phobos 
(Apperently just minor changes to dmain2.d), so I my have to give it another 
go when I get a chance.

Nick

"brad beveridge" <brad nowhere.com> wrote in message 
news:cta5mq$16rq$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Hi guys, I've seen this post 
 (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/D/gnu/600.html) which suggests that 
 a GDC cross compiler for ARM can be created.  I can build a "vanilla" 
 arm-linux toolchain, patch gdc into it and succesfully build gdc & phobos. 
 But I get weird errors when I try to use arm-linux-gdc to compile & link. 
 I can't remember especially, and don't have the logs with me.
 Can somebody give me some hints on what binutils/gcc/linux combination can 
 be used to produce a working arm-linux-gdc?
 Any particular hints in general?  I think I am just going to build an x86 
 gdc first off, to get to grips with some of the GDC issues - but I would 
 quite like to get the compiler working for ARM.

 Cheers
 Brad
Jan 27 2005
parent reply user domain.invalid writes:
A colleague and I have managed to compile the GDC frontend for ARM, but 
we're having issues with building Phobos.
The error that Phobos issues is along the lines of - Cannot implicitly 
cast ubyte* to char*.
The problem, I think, lies with the GCC builtins, and the fact that ARM 
natively has unsigned chars for the default char type, but I have no 
idea how to fix it.

Any thoughts?

Brad
Feb 20 2005
parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
Brad wrote:


 A colleague and I have managed to compile the GDC frontend for ARM, but 
 we're having issues with building Phobos.
 The error that Phobos issues is along the lines of - Cannot implicitly 
 cast ubyte* to char*.
 The problem, I think, lies with the GCC builtins, and the fact that ARM 
 natively has unsigned chars for the default char type, but I have no 
 idea how to fix it.


Linux PPC has the same problem. David Friedman is working on a fix,
I think he will explicitly change "char" to "signed char", where needed?

Luckily, D defines the signedness of chars now - whereas C does not...
(chars are signed on Linux X86 and Mac OS X, but unsigned on Linux PPC)

--anders
Feb 20 2005
parent reply brad domain.invalid writes:
Anders F Björklund wrote:


 Linux PPC has the same problem. David Friedman is working on a fix,
 I think he will explicitly change "char" to "signed char", where needed?
 
 Luckily, D defines the signedness of chars now - whereas C does not...
 (chars are signed on Linux X86 and Mac OS X, but unsigned on Linux PPC)
 
 --anders


Thanks for the quick reply.  Do you know roughly where abouts these 
changes should be made?  David?  I am quite keen to have a play with D 
on my Linux ARM machines :)

Brad
Feb 20 2005
next sibling parent =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
brad domain.invalid wrote:


 Thanks for the quick reply.  Do you know roughly where abouts these 
 changes should be made?  David?  I am quite keen to have a play with D 
 on my Linux ARM machines :)


Not really. The usual workaround on Linux PPC is to add a CFLAGS
of -fsigned-char, but GDC's Phobos doesn't really like that...

See:
http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?D.gnu/970
http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?D.gnu/972

I guess you could just insert a truckload of casts or something ?
(otherwise you would have to wait for the next version of GDC...)

--anders

PS. As you might have guessed, I went back to testing
     D on Mac OS X and Linux X86 instead of Linux PPC.
Feb 20 2005
prev sibling parent reply David Friedman <d3rdclsmail_a_ _t_earthlink_d_._t_net> writes:
brad domain.invalid wrote:

 Anders F Björklund wrote:
 

 Linux PPC has the same problem. David Friedman is working on a fix,
 I think he will explicitly change "char" to "signed char", where needed?

 Luckily, D defines the signedness of chars now - whereas C does not...
 (chars are signed on Linux X86 and Mac OS X, but unsigned on Linux PPC)

 --anders


 
 
 Thanks for the quick reply.  Do you know roughly where abouts these 
 changes should be made?  David?  I am quite keen to have a play with D 
 on my Linux ARM machines :)
 
 Brad


Brad,

Try the attached patch.  I have not tested it on one of the affected 
platforms, but I think it will work.

David
Feb 20 2005
parent Andre Renaud <andre bluewatersys.com> writes:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:27:53 -0500, David Friedman wrote:


 brad domain.invalid wrote:

 Anders F Björklund wrote:
 

 Linux PPC has the same problem. David Friedman is working on a fix, I
 think he will explicitly change "char" to "signed char", where needed?

 Luckily, D defines the signedness of chars now - whereas C does not...
 (chars are signed on Linux X86 and Mac OS X, but unsigned on Linux
 PPC)

 --anders


 
 
 Thanks for the quick reply.  Do you know roughly where abouts these
 changes should be made?  David?  I am quite keen to have a play with D
 on my Linux ARM machines :)
 
 Brad


 
 Brad,
 
 Try the attached patch.  I have not tested it on one of the affected
 platforms, but I think it will work.


In a follow up to this, we (Brad & I) have got this working with the following
additional 
changes (on top of the patch from David). Most of this should be applicable to
other
people attempting to cross compile. Please excuse the formatting of the
changes. 
We now have a cross-compiling gdc executable, and it appears to be able to use
the
libphobos std library (at least the example wc.d from the website works
properly,
haven't done any other testing yet).

phobos/std/math.d
Line 85. Change:
real modf(real x, inout real y) { return std.c.math.modfl(x,&y); } to:
real modf(real x, inout real y) { return std.c.math.modfl(x,cast(double *)&y); }

Had to edit boehm-gc/Makefile to use the arm-linux-gcc cross compiler, instead
of native 
gcc 
(lack of it caused the  R_ARM_PC24 relocation against SEC_MERGE section errors,
due
to mixed architecture objects in libphobos.a).

In phobos/Makefile.in (to accomodate the fact that compiled files won't be
executable

--- Makefile.in 2005-01-09 08:21:39.000000000 +1300
+++ Makefile.in.2       2005-02-21 16:04:53.000000000 +1300
   -33,6 +33,7   

 LIBS= LIBS 
 CC= CC 

 DMD= DMD 
 

   -123,6 +124,8   

 CONFIG_D_FRAGMENTS = config/config-head frag-ac frag-gen frag-math
config/config-mid config/config-tail
 
+config/gen_config1.o: config/gen_config1.c
+       $(HOSTCC) -c -o $  $< $(CFLAGS)
 gen_config1: config/gen_config1.o
        $(CC) -o $  $^
 
   -131,15 +134,17   
 
 gcc/config.d: $(CONFIG_D_FRAGMENTS)
        cat $^ > $ 
-
+config/gen_math.o: config/gen_math.c
+       $(HOSTCC) -c -o $  $< $(CFLAGS)
 gen_math: config/gen_math.o
-       $(CC) -o $  $^
+       $(HOSTCC) -o $  $^
 frag-math: gen_math
        ./gen_math > $ 
 
 config/gen_unix.o: config/gen_unix.c config/makestruct.h
+       $(HOSTCC) -c -o $  $< $(CFLAGS)
 gen_unix: config/gen_unix.o
-       $(CC) -o $  $^
+       $(HOSTCC) -o $  $^
 
 frag-unix: gen_unix
        ./gen_unix > $
Feb 20 2005