Re: Future of ELKS

Javier Sedano
2004-05-20T17:30:11Z

Hi,

Eduardo Pereira Habkost wrote:
>
> I guess that running gcc on 8086 will not be possible (or at least it will
> not be a simple task), the cc1 binary on my i386 is 2MB, and it will not
> be smaller if built for running on 8086. gcc is not a small compiler. The
> point is making a 8086 target for gcc. Running gcc on 8086 is another story,
> and I guess that is almost impossible. (and not worth, at least for me)
>

I supposed so. gcc is bloatware for elks. Even "vi" is :-PPP

> The issue about running a compiler in a 8086 is that it is too
> small. Running a good compiler and development environment on such small
> hardware is not easy, and if we choose go this way, we should choose
> leaving away other things that we would like, including gcc-8086. If we
> choose that all development environment neede to build elks should run
> on 8086, too, we will have additional limitations, and we will need first:
>
> 1. Create a good development environment that runs on elks (we don't
> have it). This environment will have all limitations that the 8086
> hardware will impose to us
> 2. Make elks build using it
>
> IMHO, this would be almost impossible.
>

Minix's ACK does so. Of course, it imposes limitations to the programs
(the 64k limit), but is good enough for many applications. I heard
something about ACK sources... did they free them?

Regards,

--
Javier Sedano Jarillo: javier.sedano@agora-2000.com
(http://www.it.uc3m.es/~jsedano)
Agora Systems, S.A.
C/Aravaca 12
E-28040 Madrid (Spain)
Tel.: +34 91 533 58 57
Fax.: +34 91 534 84 77
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do computers dream of electric penguins?