Re: gcc-8086

[Miguel Bolanos <mike@linuxlabs.com>]

Greetings Eduardo,

On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 09:06, Eduardo Pereira Habkost wrote:
> Hi, all,
> 
> I've been working on the DJ gcc i86 target patches, and I've been making
> it work using gas instead of nasm, and had some progress.
> 

nice.

> I would like to know if there is anyone interested on the gcc-8086 work,
> here, or that have worked on it before. I am starting to look at ELKS
> code, and I plan to test their binaries using ELKS.
> 

I haven't get to test it yet... but yeah i'd be interest to see how
useful it can be for us. ATM we use bcc.

> Another question: is there any interest from the ELKS project in using
> GCC to build ELKS? Wouldn't it make easier the work of porting existing
> Linux Kernel code to ELKS, for example?
> 

Porting the existing kernel code... u mean making a fork for elks?

I have been making my own elks kernel based on linux 2.6 kernel.. but i
haven't progress that much due to time availability.. but this have been
more a fun personal project, than anything else.

> I am wondering how painful would be making the actual Linux Kernel code
> work on a 16-bit arch, once we have a working gcc-8086. The Linux code
> seems to be "at-least-32-bit dependant" in many parts that are supposed
> to be arch-independant. But once those parts are changed, there are some
> strong reasons for not doing it?
> 

The first question that comes to my mind is... do u mean to put all the
linux kernel on a 10mb hard disk (if u are lucky to find one this big
for an 8086), even though u know that 99.5% of the code is useless for
ur box?

best wishes

Mike

> --
> Eduardo