Acorn User 11/AUCD11B.iso/LANGUAGES/GCC/gccPatch1/!gcc/docs/!Intro

Text File | 1997-04-20 | 27KB | 697 lines

Introduction to GCC for RISC OS
===============================

This is a short introduction to GCC. Information concerning a specific
compiler can be found elsewhere. The documents supplied with each GCC
compatible compiler do not provide an introduction to programming in that
particular language, for that you will have to get a text book on the language.

Please note, if you have received this copy of GCC from a CD, then it is
likely there is a more up-to-date version obtainable from elsewhere.


GCC is a small program providing a simple and consistent front end to many
compilers. Currently, the compilers supported are GNU C, GNU C++,
GNU Objective-C, GNU Fortran, GNU GNAT Ada and GNU Pascal. As more compilers
are released, GCC will support those too.

GCC is covered by the FSF General Public License (see the files docs.COPYING
and docs.COPYINGLIB for details).

This port of GCC is © Copyright 1996, 1997 Nick Burrett

As with all GNU programs, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OF ANY SORT

The GCC distribution is a support archive providing the files common to all
of the above compilers. This includes:
  - an assembler (as)
  - a linker front end (ld)
  - the compiler front end (gcc)
  - a C preprocessor (cpp)
  - a runtime library (gcc.o.libgcc)
  - gcc specific header files (gcc.h)
  - this document and others (gcc.docs)

An Acorn Object Format linker is not provided but there exists a Public
Domain linker called Drlink. Details on where to obtain this are detailed
at the end of this document.

Thanks go to various people for the help and assistance that they have
given me. Notably:

Peter Burwood for bug fixes, enhancements, testing, suggestions and more...
Niklas RÖjemo, for the assembler 'as'
Huw Rogers and Simon Callan, for UnixLib.
Jochen Scharrlach for the RISC OS GCC FAQ.
Cy Brooker for the DDEUtilsCy module.


Installation
------------

To install the GCC front end, copy the contents of this archive onto your
hard disc. Compilers can be installed by copying the contents of their
archives into the same directory as where you installed the GCC front end.
RISC OS will automatically combine the !gcc directories together.
Running !gcc will setup Run$Path to automatically search for the compiler
tools.

As compilers are installed, sub-directories named according to the language
they support will be placed within !gcc.docs. These sub-directories will
contain specific information for the language compiler, including its
usage and environment requirements.

You will require a linker and this must be obtained from a separate source,
the location of which is given below. The linker must be installed in a
directory that Run$Path searches, or within the !gcc.bin directory.

GCC uses a linker front end, LD. This will search for both drlink and link
on the current Run$Path and in that order.

This completes installation, and GCC may be used simply by typing
'gcc' at the CLI prompt.


Simple compilations
-------------------

This assumes you have actually installed a compiler and are using UnixLib
as the run-time library. Please note that the instructions below are generic
and the ideas presented can be applied to all GNU compilers. The usage of
C source files is merely co-incidental.

Source files are stored in the standard ASCII Text format and kept in a
directory that is relevant for the language of your program. For example,
C programs are stored in directory 'c' and C++ programs are stored in 'cc'.

For simple use, all that is needed is to set up a command line prompt and
ensure there is enough free memory to run the compiler (details of memory
requirements vary between compilers and can be found in the specific
compiler documentation).

To compile a C program just type:

   gcc c.hellow

This will compile, assemble and link the source 'c.hellow' to produce an
executable called '!RunImage', which can be run immediately.

Adding the switch '-o' to the command line, it's possible to specify a
place to store the resultant file:

  gcc c.hellow -o hellow

This will comple, assemble and link the source 'c.hellow' to produce an
executable called 'hellow', which can be run immediately.

It is possible to compile several sources at one go, mixing C sources in
the same program, using a command line of:

   gcc c.file1 c.file2 c.file3 c.file4

Again, this will compile, assemble and link all the sources to produce the
'!RunImage' executable.

To compile to the object form, use the -c switch. i.e.

   gcc -c c.file

will compile and assemble 'c.file' to 'o.file'.

To compile the same files but using the SharedCLibrary as the target
run-time library instead of UnixLib, add the switch '-mstubs' to the
command line. For example:

  gcc c.hellow -mstubs

will compile and link the c.hellow source file, using header files
from the SharedCLibrary, and linking against the library C:o.stubs.
The output file will still be called '!RunImage' and can be run
in the same way.

Support has been provided for both RISC OS and UNIX format filenames. GCC
will translate any UNIX filenames into their RISC OS equivalent. For example:

  ../include/stdio.h    is translated to    ^.include.h.stdio
  /work/gcc/hello.c    is translated to    $.work.gcc.c.hello
  stdlib.h        is translated to    h.stdlib

but
  tree.def        is translated to    tree.def


Switches
--------

This is a list of the simpler, standard switches for GCC. Full details can
be obtained from the !gcc.docs.gccuser manual. Please see below for the ARM
specific switches since these have altered from the original gcc version.

The switches described below are useable with any GNU compiler.

-c              compile and assemble the source to the object file
-S              compile the source to assembler code
-E              preprocess the source file
-o <file>       put the resulting output into <file>
-O              apply some optimisations to the output
-O2             apply full optimisation.
-O3        full optimisation and inline small functions as well.

There are some additional ARM specific switches.

 -mapcs, -mapcs-frame
   target for ARM Procedure Call Standard stack frames.

 -mpoke-function-name
   place the name of the current function before the start of the function
   to allow the post mortem debugger to print a readable backtrace.
   Using it's opposite will reduce code size by about 3.5%.

 -mfpe
   prevents instruction scheduling of floating point instructions since it
   increases compile time and the benefits acheived make no difference through
   the FPE.

 -mapcs-32
   target the APCS-32 bit standard. Condition flags are assumed to be corrupted
   by function calls in this mode.

 -mapcs-stack-check
   provide explicit stack checking on entry to each function which allocates
   temporary variables on the stack.

 -mapcs-strict
   make the compiler conform strictly to the APCS even in the cases where
   stack frames do not need to be set up.

 -mshort-load-bytes, -mno-short-load-words
   if the MMU traps unaligned word accesses, shorts must be loaded
   byte-at-a-time so this flag should be set.

RISC OS specific options

 -mthrowback
   send errors to a text editor capable of receiving 'throwbacks'.
   Error throwbacks will only occur when the DDEUtils module has previously
   been loaded.

 -msharedclib, -mstubs
   compiles to target SharedCLibrary and tells the linker to link with
   the file C:o.stubs instead of UnixLib.

 -munixlib
   tell the linker to target UnixLib instead of the SharedCLibrary. The
   linker will attempt to link with the file Unix:o.unixlib.

 -mamu
   Generate the file !Depend which contains a list of all the source
   files that the produced object depends on. This is intended for use
   with Acorn's Make Utility (AMU), which edits the makefile to include
   these after the '# Dynamic Dependencies' line.


LD
--

LD is a front end program that converts the linker command line as generated
by gcc to a format recognised by Drlink and Link. LD also attempts to
convert Unix format names to RISC OS format. The option recognised are:

 -L<dir>
   This specifies a directory/path that LD is to use when searching
   for libraries. <dir> must be either a path (i.e gcc:, etc), or it
   must be a valid Unix/RISC OS directory name, ending in either '/'
   or '.'. Directories are searched in the order that they are
   specified.

 -l<file>
   This specifies the name of a library file which LD will search the
   library directories for. This may either be a complete filename (i.e
   C:o.stubs) or just the leaf name, in which case, LD will search
   though the specified library directories for the file o.lib<file>
   and o.<file> if the former isn't found.

 -o <file>
   This specifies the filename to which the resultant executable will
   be stored.

 -via <file>
   <file> contains a list of object files to be included in the link process.

 -version
   Print the version number of 'ld'.

 -help
   Display a brief summary of LD and its command line arguments.


The following Drlink linker commands are recognised:
  -acornmap, -area[map] <file>, -aif, -aof, -bin, -case,
  -leave[weak], -map, -no[unused], -output, -res[can],
  -throwback, -via <file>, -verbose

The following Acorn Link linker commands are recognised:
  -aif, -aof, -bin, -map, -via <file>, -nounused[areas], -verbose

Unrecognised commands are flagged as an error and LD will not perform the
link process. Characters with square brackets are optional.

The sequence '-Lgcc: -LC: -lgcc -lstubs' will cause LD to look for the files
gcc:o.libgcc, gcc:o.gcc, c:o.libgcc, c:o.gcc, gcc:o.libstubs, gcc:o.stubs,
c:o.libstubs and c:o.stubs, taking the first gcc and stubs files that it finds.

Linker options can be passed from GCC to link using -Wl and -XLinker options.

The linker must be in the default Run$Path, as LD does not handle the -B
command. Please note that it is best to define GCC$Linker in the !gcc.!run
file to point to the linker you want to use. e.g.
  Set GCC$Linker "link"
will make LD use the program 'link' for linking.


Predefines
----------

The following preprocessor constants are defined by GCC:
   'arm', '__arm__', 'riscos', '__riscos__',
   '__GNUC_MINOR__', '__GNUC_MAJOR__', '__JMP_BUF_SIZE'

To implement dynamic allocations within a function, it is necessary to add
an extra field to jmpbuf. Fortunately the setjmp.h header files recognise
__JMP_BUF_SIZE and can alter their jmpbuf array appropriately.


Search paths
------------

The default search paths for GCC are as follows and searched in the
specified order.
   GCC$Path        GCC specific include files.
   Unix$Path       Unixlib header files.


<varargs.h>, <assert.h>, <stdarg.h>
-----------------------------------

GCC supplies it's own versions of these header files since they are not
compatible with the headers supplied with Acorn C and UnixLib.  However,
this feature is invisible to the user.


Compatibility between GCC, StrongARM and RISC OS 2
--------------------------------------------------

As of release 1.0.7 and later, GCC is now compatible with StrongARM
processors. Code produced by GCC will also be usable with StrongARM
provided a version of UnixLib 3.7b or later is used.  Linking against
previous versions of UnixLib will undoubtably fail with some very
unusual results.

Unfortunately, GCC has become unusable on any release of RISC OS prior to
release 3.10 because the module CallASWI is now used.


GCC and Virtual Memory
----------------------

GNU compilers use a lot of memory and nothing can be done about that. For
the Risc PC, UnixLib has been modified to make use of dynamic areas. So
users with small memory machines can use Clares' Virtualise to provide a
working virtual memory envionment for them. See the section *Dynamic Areas*
below.

Users of older machines, the Archimedes and A5000, can use the program
!Virtual. Currently the version is 0.37 and there exists a few small problems
with running gcc 2.7.2 compilers (or any UnixLib 3.7a and later programs)
under this environment.

UnixLib 3.7a has been heavily modified and uses some unsupported SWI calls
notably, XOS_RemoveTickerEvent, an XOS_Byte call and OS_PlatformFeatures.
Until a later version of !Virtual is released, it is safe to answer 'Y' to
all the questions related to Unknown SWIs.

Users of !Virtual can disregard the information contained within the
specific compiler documentation concerning wimp slot size. Under the
virtual memory environment, the wimp slot will need to be set to a size
approximately 32K greater than the largest binary likely to be executed, the
compiler. For example, if the size of cc1 is 700K, then setting the wimp slot
to 732K should ensure that a successful compilation can be made

It should be noted that the greater amount of wimp slot that can be given
to a virtual memory task, a smaller number of page swaps will be needed and
a significant improvement in compile times should result.


Dynamic areas
-------------

Peter Burwood has modified UnixLib to use dynamic areas on the Risc PC and
these modifications have been included in UnixLib 3.7a. This section applies
to all GNU compilers supplied by either Nick Burrett, Peter Burwood or
(hopefully) anyone else providing they have used UnixLib 3.7a or later. A
description of using dynamic areas is included with UnixLib 3.7a and some
of it is duplicated here:

UnixLib 3.7a has a facility to use Dynamic Areas, found in RISC OS 3.5
and above, for the program's heap. The heap is another name for the
malloc area. The advantages of using a dynamic area for the program's
heap include :-

   * the WimpSlot of the program can be limited to the code and stack
     requirements of the program. This helps alleviate the cost of RISC
     OS task switching which slows down dramatically as the WimpSlot
     grows in size.

   * Dynamic Areas provide a means of Virtual Memory when used with a
     product such as Virtualise[1]. Virtual Memory allows programs to
     use more data space than is available with just physical memory.

If any problems are encountered with the implementation or use of the
dynamic area UnixLib heap then please contact Peter Burwood via e-mail at
[e-mail]. Please do not contact Peter with general
UnixLib problems, but see the UnixLib ReadMe file for a contact address.

Basically, use

  *Set GCC_Heap ""

to enable dynamic areas for the compiler and

  *UnSet GCC_Heap

to disable dynamic areas for the compiler.

Before running a program set the wimpslot in the normal way, but it only
needs to be large enough to hold the sum of the largest executables that
can be run concurrently. e.g., with gcc, use the unsqueezed size of gcc
plus cc1. When running from a command line amu remember to allow
additional space for the amu executable and amu's workspace (though this
is tricky to estimate!).

If other programs that form part of a compiler are run directly from the
command line, e.g., gnatmake, then separate environment variables must
be set to allow these programs to use dynamic areas for the program's
heap. So, with gnatmake,

   *Set gnatmake_heap ""

As a user, you should not really need to worry about these details as the
!gcc.!run file already contains the relevant lines. Please read the !run
file if you are a Risc PC user, since some lines will need to be uncommented.

[1] Virtualise is a commercial product available from Clares. Peter Burwood
has no connection with Clares or the Virtualise product other than being a
user of Virtualise. If other similar products become available then UnixLib
should work transparently since the UnixLib startup code does not use
any Virtualise features.


Troubleshooting
---------------

Here are describled some common problems users have with gcc and the GNU
compilers. Possible solutions are provided for the known problems.

1. The compiler fails to compile anything but no error message is reported.

  This is usually caused by a lack of memory. To see how far through
  compilation a file has gone, try compiling with the '-v' flag. '-v' gives
  verbose output and will show the programs gcc is executing.

  A lack of memory will be shown up by an almost instantaneous return from
  any program executed. If this happens, try increasing the wimpslot,
  using *wimpslot -min nnnK, where nnn is as follows:

  a) When not using dynamic areas i.e. when gcc_heap isn't set or you
     don't have a RiscPC
      2500 or more for GNU C
      2600 or more for GNU Objective-C
      3000 or more for GNU C++
      6000 or more for GNAT Ada

  b) When using dynamic areas (RiscPC's only) and *set gcc_heap "" has been
     performed.
      1500 or more for GNU C
      1500 or more for GNU Objective-C
      1900 or more for GNU C++
      3200 or more for GNAT Ada

  When the compiler runs out of memory during compilation, an error
  'virtual memory exhausted' is usually reported.

2. Abort on data transfer errors are displayed during compilation

  This is due to a lack of memory and will be rectified by increasing the
  wimpslot to similar values as above.

3. The error 'No writable memory at this address' is returned.

  This is due to a lack of memory and will be rectified by increasing the
  wimpslot to similar values as above.

4. ld fatal error: drlink returned exit status 12

  This is due to a lack of memory during the linking stage. Increase the
  wimpslot to rectify this.

5. The error 'virtual memory exhausted' is returned.

  This is due to a lack of memory and usually occurs during the compilation
  process.

  a) If you are running on a RiscPC, make sure that !gcc.!run has been
     altered for using dynamic areas.

     If the is already altered, then you might have to reduce the number of
     applications that are running before using gcc.

  b) If you are not running on a RiscPC then increase WimpSlot to a much
     larger value.

     You can try using !Virtual.

6. A source file is correctly compiled and linked. The resultant executable
   'hellow' is placed in the current directory. However, when I try and
   run the file I get the error 'No such file or directory'.

   This and many other obsure errors are caused by linking source files
   against run-time libraries that are incompatible with the StrongARM
   processor. An example would be UnixLib 3.7a.

   StrongARM compatibility wasn't introduced to UnixLib until version 3.7b.


AOF files, Libraries, Linkers etc.
----------------------------------

If you are confused about the above terms, then you might want to read this:

Taking the C compiler as an example. Language C source files are stored within
a directory called 'c'.

Typing
  *gcc -c c.hello -o o.hello

will tell gcc to run the C compiler on the source file c.hello. The resultant
output will be stored in the directory 'o' as hello. Files in 'o' are called
Acorn Object Format (AOF) files.

During multistage compilation (i.e. where a program is made up from several
source files), the compiler will compile one file at a time and this will
produce several AOF files.

Each source file might contain references to variables and functions that are
not defined within its own scope. For an executable to be created, these
references must be resolved and that is the purpose of the Linker.

The Linker takes AOF files and attempts to resolve references between them.
Not all references are defined within AOF files, some (like printf) are
defined within libraries - called Acorn Library Format (ALF) files. So the
Linker will also look at ALF files to match unresolved symbols.

For example, below is a list of C source files that will be compiled to make
the program called Harry. Along with each source file is a list of the
symbols that are defined within that source, and a list of symbols that
are not defined (i.e. referenced) by that source.

    C source: c.fred
      Symbols defined: foo, bar, pint
      Symbols referenced: printf, puts, food

    C source: c.bob
      Symbols defined: fags, beer, food
      Symbols referenced: bar, pint

    C source: c.harry
      Symbols defined: main
      Symbols referenced: foo

Using gcc to compile c.fred, c.bob, c.harry will produce three AOF files,
o.fred, o.bob and o.harry.

c.harry contains a reference to 'foo' which is defined within c.fred. So
the Linker must combine o.harry and o.fred to resolve a reference.

c.fred contains a reference to 'printf', 'puts' and 'food'. 'food' is
defined by c.bob so o.bob will also be combined with o.harry and o.fred
to resolve further references.

'printf' and 'puts' are defined by the C library, therefore the linker will
need to combine the ALF file with o.harry, o.fred and o.bob to finally
generate an executable.


Obtaining compilers
-------------------

As said earlier, GCC is a compiler front end. Proper compilers can be
obtained from the following places:

GNU C, Objective-C and C++:
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/b/b013

GNU GNAT Ada:
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/e/e095

GNU Fortran (G77):
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/e/e167

GNU Pascal (GPC):
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/e/e168


Other compiler related utilities
--------------------------------

Listed below is a small set of utilities you might find a useful
complement to the GNU compilers.

Drlink (an AOF linker):
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/b/b071/drlink.arc

UnixLib (a C library emulating BSD, System V and POSIX functions):
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/a/a042/unixlib.arc

 The latest snapshot of UnixLib may be obtained from:
  http://www.callan.demon.co.uk/unixlib

Bison (a yacc parser):
  ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/archimedes/gnu/bison124.spk

Diffutils (file difference and patch programs):
  ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/archimedes/gnu/diffdist.spk

Flex (a lexical analyser: Unix Lex equivalent):
  ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/archimedes/gnu/flex252.spk

Indent (C source code formatter):
  ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/archimedes/gnu/indent.spk

Sed (batch stream editor):
  ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/archimedes/gnu/sed.spk

!Virtual (virtual memory for early Archimedes, A5000 and before):
  ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/a/a277/a277.arc


Mirrors of hensa/micros
-----------------------

Imperial College:
 ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/computing/systems/archimedes/collections/hensa/riscos/

Demon Internet Services
 ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/hensa/micros/arch/riscos/


Distribution patches
--------------------

From time to time bugs might be fixed in the GCC distribution. To save
download time involved in uploading/fetching new binaries, patch archives
will become available from the address:

  http://www.btinternet.com/~nick.burrett

Announcements will be posted to comp.sys.acorn.announce whenever new
patch archives are uploaded.


Porting compilers
-----------------

The above compilers are all called front ends. They provide a mechanism
for translating the relevant source code format (C, C++, Fortran etc.) into
relevant information for the back-end. The back-end converts this information
into a register transfer language and performs most of the optimisation
techniques. This register transfer language is then applied to a processor
back-end which will apply further optimisation (processor specific) and then
output assembler instructions.  The compiler backend can support many
different processors and operating systems, ARM and RISC OS are just two of
them.

The job of actually porting new compilers has been made very easy due to the
hard work of the compiler development teams. Nick Burrett wrote the RISC OS
port of the ARM processor backend with a little help from Peter Burwood.
Simon Callan and Huw Rodgers wrote UnixLib without which the job of porting
the compiler would probably never have surfaced.

The actual ARM backend used to create the RISC OS port is, for the moment,
unavailable on mainstream release in the GCC distribution. The alterations
made to make the compilers work under RISC OS are very involved, but
procedures are slowly underway to merge changes. Fortunately, the ARM
backend for RISC OS is only going to be of interest to any future language
compiler porters. If anybody wishes to port a new compiler then they should
talk to Nick Burrett who will then send the changes through on request.

The main GCC compiler sources can be obtained from the sites listed described
below. Sources are approximately 7.5Mb compressed, 27Mb uncompressed.


Contacting Nick Burrett
-----------------------

I can only be contacted by e-mail at [e-mail]


Location of the main GCC sources
--------------------------------

  Most GNU software is packed using the GNU `gzip' compression program.
  Source code is available on most sites distributing GNU software.

  For information on how to order GNU software on tape, floppy or cd-rom, or
  printed GNU manuals, check the file etc/ORDERS in the GNU Emacs
  distribution, ftp the file /pub/gnu/GNUinfo/ORDERS on prep, or
  e-mail a request to: [e-mail]

  By ordering your GNU software from the FSF, you help us continue to
  develop more free software.  Media revenues are our primary source of
  support.  Donations to FSF are deductible on US tax returns.

  thanx [e-mail]

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