Re: Linux to MacOSX port effort.

[Paul Johnson]

As usual, I don't know for sure, but have some info that might help.

1) I believe that if you build a stock gcc3, without patching, it will 
still be possible to build swarm if you make one small patch in the 
swarm source code. This small patch is the one that turns off the 
accelerating effect of one particular change in Swarm.  Until recently, 
the swarm source was set so it would compile with a standard compiler, 
and this was the patch I applied to use the acceleration. I believe you 
would just reverse this patch and Swarm will compile with standard gcc3. 
 I SUSPECT (GUESS, hope, dream,wish) the same would be true with gcc-3.1.

*** interface.el-original       Sun Jul  8 19:22:33 2001
--- interface.el        Sun Jul  8 19:22:56 2001
***************
*** 625,631 ****

  (defun create-dispatch-hash-table (protocol phase)
    (let ((ht (make-hash-table)))
!     ;(load-dispatch-hash-table protocol phase ht)
      ht))

  (defun c-objc-type (type)
--- 625,631 ----

  (defun create-dispatch-hash-table (protocol phase)
    (let ((ht (make-hash-table)))
!     (load-dispatch-hash-table protocol phase ht)
      ht))

  (defun c-objc-type (type)

Remember, you want to undo the effect of this patch, as the Swarm source 
has already had it applied.

2.  With gcc3, the Swarm users will still see many harmless complier 
warnings, the ones described in the SwarmFaq, but those warnings are 
harmless.

So, if you are pushing on this hard to find out if it will work at all, 
I think you should build gcc3.1 as it is and then see what happens.

3.  Marcus Daniels was the one who made the gcc patch that solved the 
problems described in #1 and #2.  He has found ways to make essentially 
the same patch for gcc since 2.95.  I expect as soon as he needs to use 
gcc-3.1 in his work, then he will share an update with us.

At one point, I was trying to edit the gcc code because the patch I had 
from MGD was not for the then-current gcc, and to me it was very 
confusing, but I think one time I actually did get it to work. But it 
took about 8 trys of matching up code fragments in the patch.

Last year, I emailed the patch to the person who was listed as the 
gcc-objc maintainer and asked he consider it, but since I'm not the 
author and did not offer to support those changes, he probably did not 
pay much attention to it. Rightly so, I expect.


Marc-Antoine Parent wrote:
> a) We are dealing with gcc3.1. The Objective C core compiler is normally 
> patched for swarm; and the patch (designed for 3.0) changes lines that 
> have changed between gcc3.0 and 3.1. Has anybody re-examined how to 
> upgrade the patch code to gcc3.1? Is it even still necessary? (Did 
> somebody propose that patch to Gnu?)


--
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700


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