1 The GNU C compiler: general information and installation

This chapter contains general and installation information about the amiga-port of the GNU C compiler gcc.

1.1 Current Version

Gcc current version is now 2.6.0 and 2.6.1 is in work. It does include a new version of ixemul.library, v40.3, but users are urged to get ixemul404.lha on Aminet site or my own FTP site, due to errors for 68000 systems. A new library, libnix, avoid using ixemul.library. 2.6.1 will include protos, like SAS-C, making SASC ports to GCC easier. A new assembler, gas-2.5 is included, a package called q_anote enables output of mixing C/Asm code for debugging purposes. Work is in progress to implement stack growing facility, thus avoiding setting stack before launching gcc.

1.2 Requirements

Any Amiga (ranging from A1000 upto A4000/40) will run amigados-gnu utilities. A minimum of 4MB memory is needed in order to compile small/medium projects. More memory will be needed for large projects, such as recompiling gcc itself, or programming C++. Gigamem and VMM do work with GCC so *maybe* less memory will work. But in this case, an MMU equipped Amiga (A3000,A4000/40) is necessary. @xref{68EC0xx}.

A full installation, including C++/ObjC related files, inline headers, cbm-headers, (@pxref{Includes}) roughly requires about 20 MB of HD space.

Support for 1.2/1.3 is dropped. If you have 1.2/1.3, get a better Kickstart version. Gcc works under KS 1.2/1.3, but the full functionality is only available under KS 2.x+. A fast CPU (eg. 68030@25MHz or better) is also of help.

1.3 Authors

Gcc and related GNU-software has been ported to the Amiga by the following folks: See section How to get help.

	Gcc v2.2.2 port:   Markus Wild
	Gcc v2.3.3 port:   Markus Wild
	Gcc v2.4.5 port:   Philippe Brand, Lars Hecking, Fred Fish
	Gcc v2.5.0 and up: Philippe Brand, Fred Fish, Leonard Norrgard

	Ixemul.library:    Markus Wild, Leonard Norrgard, R. Luebbert
	Libnix:		   Matthias Fleischer, Gunther Nikl
        Gerlib:            Gerhard Mueller

1.4 Sources for Gcc

All GCC sources & binaries are available on:

1. Aminet sites (wuarchive.wustl.edu and mirrors such as ftp.luth.se) in /pub/aminet/dev/gcc
2. Ramses The Amiga Flying BBS:

   	+33-1-60037015  HST Dual v32 terbo 4800-21600
           +33-1-60037713  SupraFax v32bis    4800-14400
           +33-1-60037716  Tornado v22bis     1200-2400
   

   in Topic ‘Development’, Area ‘Gcc’ (are 156).

GNU source code is available on:

1. the same FTP site you’ve taken the binary distribution from
2. gnu.prep.ai.mit.edu (18.71.0.38) in ‘/pub/gnu’
3. Ramses The Amiga Flying BBS in Topic ‘AmigaUnix/Unix/Linux/NetBSD’, Area ‘Gnu Source Code’

These archives should contain everything necessary to get you going, they don’t include sources for ixemul.library, which are available on Aminet sites in ‘/pub/aminet/dev/gcc/ixemsrc3947.tar.gz’ (as of this writing, work is in progress for the v40 version of ixemul.library, sources will be available on an Aminet site near you).

As stated by Richard Stallman of the FSF:

"The GPL says that any distribution of binaries must contain either the source code or a written offer to supply source code (see the GPL for details of what is required)."

1.5 Inline Headers

The inline headers for gcc can be created from the original CBM fd files. @xref{Includes}. @xref{Pragmas}. They can be created as follows:

CLI> Assign INCLUDE: GCC:os-include
CLI> Assign FD: INCLUDE:fd
CLI> Makedir INCLUDE:inline
CLI> cd USR:bin/geninline
CLI> gen31

This will create all inline-headers in ‘GCC:os-include/inline’. If you have 2.0 headers, use gen20 instead, if you have 3.0, use gen30. OS3.1 (rev 40.13) inline headers are included with the current version of gcc. See section Current Version.

NOTE: perl scripts do not handle correctly AmigaDOS include files, which seems to mean they are somewhat broken. This needs some voluntary work ...

There is also another way of generating inline headers, using fd2inline program:

CLI> fd2inline <fd_file> <proto_file>

1.6 Amiga Libraries

Starting from this release an AmigaDOS compliant library is provided, thanks to libnix authors (Matthias Fleischer and Gunther Nikl).

Anyway if you want to rebuild one, there are two methods:

1) Using hunk2gcc; the AmigaDOS object converter made by Markus Wild. To achieve this, simply grab a copy of latest amiga.lib (from Commodore Development Kit, @pxref{Includes}) and make a new directory where you want your converted object files to go, cd into it, and enter

	hunk2gcc amiga.lib [..further libs if you like..]

This generates an a.out object file for every program unit present in the hunk file (in this case, from amiga.lib).

As the final step convert all those files into an a.out style library by issuing:

	ar qc libamiga.a obj.*
	ranlib libamiga.a

The ranlib run builds a symbol table in the archive, and makes accesses to the library much faster.

2) Creating a libamiga.a library with libnix is fairly easy, but takes some time. Just uncompress sources.lha from libnix distribution and run a ‘make libamiga.a’.

Note: As long as you make no AmigaDOS specific calls, you can create a dummy library using:

  cat "int dummy;" >dummy.c
  gcc -c dummy.c
  ar crv libamiga.a dummy.o
  mv libamiga.a gcc:lib

1.7 Installation

1. If this is your first installation of GCC:

   Do the following:

   cd place_with_lot_of_space      ; EDIT! specify one
   makedir gnu
   lha x gcc260-base.lha           ; first part, you need it
   

   Now you have to append ‘gnu/s/user-startup’ to your ‘s:user-startup’ (replace Devel:GNU by your own gnu path).

   Continue:

   execute gnu/s/user-startup      ; makes important assigns
   copy gnu/envarc/#? ENVARC:
   

   Edit the following lines! If you have a 68000 or 68010 Amiga, remove the "-020" from the following lines wherever it appears!

   lha x gcc260-c-020.lha      ; C-compiler part; you need it
   lha x gcc260-doc.lha        ; only if you want Gcc documentation
   lha x gcc260-c++-020.lha    ; only if you want C++
   lha x gcc260-objc-020.lha   ; only if you want Objective-C
   lha x gcc260-utils.lha      ; only if you want additional utilities
                               ; (recommended for Unix compatibility)
   lha x gcc260-utilsdoc.lha   ; if you want all utilities documentation
   

   You must restore links between some programs by running the script ‘restorelinks’:

   sh /gnu/s/restorelinks      ; EDIT! Append a " copy" to this line
                               ; if you don't want to use makelink
                               ; but rather copy file
   

   Last part:

   lha x gcc260-diffs.lha      ; if you want to rebuild all distribution
   lha x gcc260-texi.lha       ; if you want to build Postscript doc files
   

   Now skip to next paragraph and happy compiling!

2. If you "upgrade" your gcc environment from v2.5.x, just unarchive first 2 archives as it would normally include all what you need (thus gcc260-base and gcc260-c). Make sure you delete your previous ixemul.library wherever it is (usually LIBS:).

Note: new version of ixemul.library is provided, make sure you don’t have another copy somewhere which may conflict with gcc.

1.8 Compiling

What about a nice Hello World ?

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
  printf("Hello World!\n");
}

This was pretty simple ;-) Now we have to compile it. There’s a lot of options in gcc but simplest way to compile this would be:

CLI> gcc -o hello hello.c

Simple ?

Here’s more options.

Target processor for Motorola family: You can compile plain 68000 code, 68020, 68030, 68040, 68881 (have a look at GCC documentation, either in info or AmigaGuide format, chapter ‘Invoking Gcc/SubModel Options/M680X0 Options for Motorola specific compilation flags’).

CLI> gcc -m68020 -m68881 -o hello hello.c

This will compile your programs using 68020 code and direct calls to math-processor, and will link with accelerated libraries, located in ‘GCC:lib/lib020’.

Optimization: Either you don’t want optimization, or you can provide ‘-O’, which will optimize your code, or if you really want top optimization, use ‘-O2’ flag (for more discussion about optimization, read info or AmigaGuide doc chapter Invoking Gcc/Optimize Options). There’s now even a ‘-O3’ optimization option, which will go even further.

CLI> gcc -O2 -o hello hello.c

You’ll never have a "Hello World" program running so fast ;-)

Code generation: Perhaps you want to generate resident programs. Flag is -resident, at compile and link stage.

CLI> gcc -resident -o hello hello.c

Of course you can mix all options, resulting in:

CLI> gcc -O2 -m68020 -m68881 -resident -o hello hello.c

This will make a 68020+68881 executable highly optimized and resident.

IMPORTANT: If you only use AmigaDOS functions or you don’t want to use ixemul for philosophical reasons, you can get rid of ixemul.library with:

CLI> gcc -noixemul -o foobar foobar.c

provided you have libnix distribution (included with 2.6.0 distribution).

1.9 How to get help

The current amiga-gcc-port maintainer is available:

    Philippe BRAND
    Fidonet: Ramses The Amiga Flying BBS 2:320/104.21
    Email:   phb@colombo.telesys-innov.fr (ONLY for personnal email).
    Ftp:     colombo.telesys-innov.fr:/pub/amigados-gnu
             or /pub/incoming/uploads for uploads.

There’s also an amiga-gcc mailing list running in Finland. @xref{Mailing lists}. Philippe Brand will forward all questions to that list, but you’d be better off using it directly ;)

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