Re: GRUB2 Build on Mac OS X

[Marco Gerards <mgerards@xs4all.nl>]

Andrei Warkentin <andrey.warkentin@gmail.com> writes:

> On Dec 8, 2005, at 4:01 PM, andre-smith@speakeasy.net wrote:
>
>> The Mac OS X GCC compiler will not build GRUB2, due static linking
>> at address 0x2000; this error can be confirmed during the configure
>> process. If I could build GRUB2 using the Mac OS X GCC, I would be
>> able to build GRUB2 images from Mac OS X.
>
> The OS X ld is not the GNU linker - so sure it can't link at 0x2000,
> it doesn't know what -T means. You would probably use some
> permutation of the -segaddr option. Moreover, OS X uses the Mach-O
> binary format, not ELF...

As I explained before only ELF can be used.

>> The binary I attempted the build using the cross compiler tool
>> chain powerpc-elf, would have executed on PowerPC Linux, but I
>> would not build due to the nested function support being disabled
>> in the Apple GCC
>
> I don't think I understand - you can build a bootstrap GCC targetted
> at powerpc-linux, from the sources obtained via official GNU ftp.
> There would not be any restrictions there... This would allow you to
> build powerpc-elf binaries needed by OF.
>
>>
>> Since the GRUB2 tools built using a Linux GCC compiler will suffice
>> at the moment, I can see why the team is not overly concerned with
>> this issue. If GRUB2 is going to be portable(Mac OS X), then some
>> changes will be needed to accomplish this goal.
>
> I think it would be an interesting idea to allow the use of different
> toolsets to produce the boot-time files and the system utilities.
> This way, the boot-time stuff can be build as powerpc-elf, while the
> OS X system utilities can be built as Mach-O (well, not 'can' -
> should, there is no other way here).

This is possible already.  For example when I crosscompile GRUB on my
x86 I get grub-mkimage as x86 tools and grubof as a PPC ELF.  Perhaps
it doesn't build Mach-O yet, but that is something that can be fixed.

--
Marco