3 Mar
2025
3 Mar
'25
6:50 p.m.
On Sun, Mar 2, 2025 at 11:51 AM Doug McIntyre <merlyn(a)geeks.org> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 01, 2025 at 06:46:46PM -0500, Dan Cross
wrote:
Huh. I totally believe you, but I have no memory of this. Perhaps I
blanked it out; it does sound rather traumatic.
- Dan C.
On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 6:37 PM Warner Losh
<imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
In that time period, the gcc distribution had a special bootstrap
version (older version?) of itself that was capable specificly of
being able to be compiled by the cc that SunOS shipped with that was
intended to compile the kernel bits shipped to configure in new limits/drivers, etc.
The first stages of getting gcc compiled on SunOS was compiling that bootstrap
version of itself, and then using that bootstraped special version of gcc to then
compile
the regular/up-to-date version of gcc.
Eventually after some gcc major version, it stopped supporting/bundling this special
bootstrap
version, and dropped support for bootstrapping itself up on SunOS. Yes. I think so. But I also think that said C
compiler wasn't adequate to bootstrap gcc or that there were extra steps /
workarounds needed to do that. This was during the K&R -> ANSI cutover that Sun did
this as well, and the old compiler was definitely K&R only.
It's been years but I remember bootstrapping gcc with the `cc` that
came with SunOS (was it in /usr/ucb? For some reason that sticks in my
memory). I don't recall additional workaround steps, though perhaps
one had to install other GNU utilities?