9fans archive / 2006 / 06 / 68 /    prev next

From: Latchesar Ionkov <lionkov@lan...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] gcc on plan9
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 13:47:02 -0600


On Jun 7, 2006, at 1:26 PM, Roman Shaposhnick wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 01:17:25PM -0600, Latchesar Ionkov wrote:
>> We need support for C++ and Fortran.
>
>   Oh my! It'll be a brand new can worms to open :-(
>
>> It will use GNU binutils.
>
>   What about libc ? Surely you can't expect UNIX applications
>   to be happy without libc or better yet glibc. Do you intend
>   to port it as well ?

We will try to use APE.

>
>> What I am planning to do (and that's what we agreed on the Secret
>> Plan 9 Secret Society Society meeting :) is just migrate dhogs  
>> changes
>> to the newest versions of the GNU utils.
>
>   That is a doable thing. But I fail to see what it strives to
>   accomplish on the application level, unless, of course, the other
>   "secret pact" was to bring all the GNU cruft (like glibc, libstdc++,
>   etc.) along the way.

We would like to convince some people that Plan9 (kernel) is a useful  
alternative to Linux without  asking them to rewrite all their  
applications. Like it or not, most people won't consider spending man- 
months in effort just to check if an alternative is better.  
Especially if there is not much hype surrounding the alternative :)

>
>   Please explain what's your next step, as far as application
>   migration is concerned ?

As Ron mentioned the immediate objectives are running MPQC and some  
HPC benchmarks.

>
> Thanks,
> Roman.
>
> P.S. Sorry for being harsh, but I've just suffered a long porting
> effort of the same thing. And let me tell you -- C++/g++ and glibc
> ain't pretty beasts. I dread the day they appear anywhere around
> Plan9.

The GNU apps won't be part of the standard Plan9 distribution, so you  
can continue to ignore them :)

	Lucho