[parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[dhazeghi]

Hello,

I have been watching this project for some time and wanted to thank you
guys for all the great work so far. The recent announcement of a BETA CD
is highly encouraging.

However I would like to know what work if any has been done on the SOM
linker which HP released to the public last November(?). It seems that
as of right now, it has not been touched since February 14, and the FSF
binutils snapshots still do not have any SOM support for ld. Has there
been any movement in merging this in, or is anybody working on this?
Thanks.

Dara Hazeghi

Re: [parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[Alex deVries]

dhazeghi@pacbell.net wrote:
> However I would like to know what work if any has been done on the SOM
> linker which HP released to the public last November(?). It seems that
> as of right now, it has not been touched since February 14, and the FSF
> binutils snapshots still do not have any SOM support for ld. Has there
> been any movement in merging this in, or is anybody working on this?

The initial plan was to do our 32-bit userspace with SOM, worrying about
ELF32 much later in the game.  But ELF32 development happened a lot
quicker than expected, and so nobody's really done much on the SOM
linker.

I suspect it'd be very hard to use the SOM linker code to incorporate it
into binutils, but I could be wrong.

What are you actually trying to do?

- Alex

-- 
Alex deVries, Principal Solutions Architect, The Puffins at Linuxcare
613.562.2759 tel
alex@linuxcare.com, http://www.linuxcare.com/
Linuxcare, Support for the revolution.

Re: [parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[dhazeghi]

Alex deVries wrote:

> dhazeghi@pacbell.net wrote:
> > However I would like to know what work if any has been done on the SOM
> > linker which HP released to the public last November(?). It seems that
> > as of right now, it has not been touched since February 14, and the FSF
> > binutils snapshots still do not have any SOM support for ld. Has there
> > been any movement in merging this in, or is anybody working on this?
>
> The initial plan was to do our 32-bit userspace with SOM, worrying about
> ELF32 much later in the game.  But ELF32 development happened a lot
> quicker than expected, and so nobody's really done much on the SOM
> linker.

That's what it looked like...

>
>
> I suspect it'd be very hard to use the SOM linker code to incorporate it
> into binutils, but I could be wrong.
>
> What are you actually trying to do?

I would like to be able to set up a cross compilation environment for hpux and
32 bit PA-RISC. However without a functional cross linker, this is impossible
to do, and as binutils has not got one yet, I thought perhaps the one that HP
open-sourced might be some use. It would seem logical that with the sources
available, it shouldn't be too difficult to fix the broken bits and get a SOM
linker working in binutils, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Oh
well, thanks for the info...

Dara Hazeghi

Re: [parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[John David Anglin]

> I would like to be able to set up a cross compilation environment for hpux and
> 32 bit PA-RISC. However without a functional cross linker, this is impossible
> to do, and as binutils has not got one yet, I thought perhaps the one that HP
> open-sourced might be some use. It would seem logical that with the sources
> available, it shouldn't be too difficult to fix the broken bits and get a SOM
> linker working in binutils, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Oh
> well, thanks for the info...

You should be able to build cross compilation tools under hpux for hppa-linux.
First you should install native versions of binutils and gcc under hpux (this
assumes that you have the hpux C compiler and linker).  The release version of
gcc (2.95.2) would be a good choice.  The standard hpux linker works fine with
gcc/gas for C compilations.  Then follow the directions at www.parisc-linux.org
for building the cross compilation tools and linux.

Dave
-- 
J. David Anglin                                  dave.anglin@nrc.ca
National Research Council of Canada              (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6605)

Re: [parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[dhazeghi]

John David Anglin wrote:

> > I would like to be able to set up a cross compilation environment for hpux and
> > 32 bit PA-RISC. However without a functional cross linker, this is impossible
> > to do, and as binutils has not got one yet, I thought perhaps the one that HP
> > open-sourced might be some use. It would seem logical that with the sources
> > available, it shouldn't be too difficult to fix the broken bits and get a SOM
> > linker working in binutils, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Oh
> > well, thanks for the info...
>
> You should be able to build cross compilation tools under hpux for hppa-linux.
> First you should install native versions of binutils and gcc under hpux (this
> assumes that you have the hpux C compiler and linker).  The release version of
> gcc (2.95.2) would be a good choice.  The standard hpux linker works fine with
> gcc/gas for C compilations.  Then follow the directions at www.parisc-linux.org
> for building the cross compilation tools and linux.

This is not precisely what I mean. What I should have said is that I want to create
a cross compiler --host=i686-linux --target=hppa-hpux. I asked this list, because
you folks did some work on the SOM linker, which is at the moment the missing piece
for a cross toolchain which targets hpux.

Thanks,

Dara

P.S. On a different note, is the recipe fully up to date? I tried following it a
few weeks ago, but glibc did not complete building successfully.

Re: [parisc-linux] [Semi OT] SOM Linker

[John David Anglin]

> This is not precisely what I mean. What I should have said is that I want to create
> a cross compiler --host=i686-linux --target=hppa-hpux. I asked this list, because
> you folks did some work on the SOM linker, which is at the moment the missing piece
> for a cross toolchain which targets hpux.

This also may be possible.  The first step would be to copy the hpux headers
to a i686-linux system and see if you can build the HP linker.  The next
step would be to try to build the cross binutils tools.  I know this
requires the hpux headers and likely some hacking would be required to
get it to build.

The linker is probably the hard part.  There may be byte ordering issues
and bugs in what HP contributed.

Dave
-- 
J. David Anglin                                  dave.anglin@nrc.ca
National Research Council of Canada              (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6605)