[OpenIndiana-discuss] The Register today

[Toomas Soome]

> On 10. May 2021, at 12:05, Volker A. Brandt <vab at bb-c.de> wrote:
> 
> Toomas Soome writes:
>> The immediate issue is https://www.illumos.org/issues/2757. In core, this
>> issue means that negative 32-bit numbers are not translated to negative
>> 64-bit numbers. Currently used gcc 4.4.4 does implement such translation in
>> compiler, there is no such patch for more recent compilers (firstly, the
>> code path in more recent compilers has changed a lot, and secondly, such
>> translation should be done by OS). This effectively does block switch from
>> gcc 4.4.4. I actually am running gcc 7 built system, knowingly, keeping in
>> mind that I may be bitten by problems cause by this issue.
> 
> In other words, when that issue is fixed, the primary compiler could be
> switched to gcc 7?


yes, assuming the needed cleanups are done;) but then again, this issue has been open for ~10 years.


> 
>> Secondly, there are SPARC optimizer issues in gcc 7 and gcc 9 (likely with
>> 10 as well), crashing compiler while building specific parts of illumos
>> tree. One example:
> [...]
> 
> Could this be worked around by selectively turning off -O2 until that
> is fixed?

I have -O1 in my local patch, yes. But, the implication of this issue is, we do not really know how much, or to what extent, we can count on gcc. I do realize this does sound like FUD, but we do depend on external compiler and projects are rather removing SPARC support...

> 
>> I haven’t had time to open bugreport with gcc.
> 
> Fair enough.
> 
> [...]
>> As a side note, it is interesting to see SPARC related discussion in this list; there is no package repository for SPARC by OpenIndiana;)
> 
> Yes.  However, there are people working on new infrastructure for OI;
> as soon as that is in place there will be a public repo for OI/SPARC.
> 

Yes, I am aware of that too. From one hand it is nice, but from other hand, there is a reason *why* I would vote for removing SPARC support.

And the reason is, I do think we should stop looking backward and start looking forward. I’d rather spend my time on building support for things like arm64 or risc-v or some quantum computer or something what really matters for future of this OS.

rgds,
toomas