16 Nov
2005
16 Nov
'05
10:41 p.m.
I'm the original poster of this thread.
On Tue, 15 Nov 2005, Peter Jeremy wrote:
Wesley Parish mentioned bcc and OpenWatcom. I looked
into the former
and it's probably the best starting point (though, with due respect to
BDE, the code it generates could be better). Assuming that Unix fits
into the C subset implemented by bcc, you'd be better off spending the
effort on improving bcc than porting PCC. At the time I looked,
OpenWatcom was either still vapourware or not self-hosting.
I don't think everything needs to be bootstrapped with an open-source
compiler. I have Turbo C++ 1.01 which is a more than adequate C compiler
for anything I've done with it (ranging from clones of Unix tools to a
COMMAND.COM to an Apple //e emulator). Whatever does the job is fine for
me.
So getting the kernel up and getting files in and out of the image until a
native C compiler is ready (pcc?) can be done with anything, practically.
QEMU is a good enough testbed, and gives you well-defined hardware. Once
everything is up and running, then maybe one can migrate on to newer
systems (V7, 2BSD), though V6 should be simple enough as a starting point,
provided most of it is in C (I haven't really looked).
-uso.