From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Kevin Hendricks Reply-To: khendricks@ivey.uwo.ca To: linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org Subject: Apple's role in GNU tools development Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:08:43 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <00021021143100.00574@localhost.localdomain> Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: Hi, In case you are interested in Apple's involvement with GNU tools, here is a meesage that San Shebs (previous chief maintainer of gdb, posted to the gdb mailing lists). I certainly hope that when MacOS X does begin shipping that we can make MacOS BSD binaries work under Linux for PPC and visa-versa. Give normal BSD can rn Linux binaries with a compatibilitity library this should be possible. Furthermore there are projects currently which allow user level code to run a "Linux kernel" in a user process and hopefully the (if we put our mind to it) a way to run a BSD kernel (namely Darwin) in a process on a Linux PPC machines. Either way, we should all benefit from Apple sponsored ppc improvements to the GNU tools. Kevin ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Status Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:48:32 -0800 From: Stan Shebs Just a quick note to let everybody know what is going on with me and GDB. After a brief career as a consultant (read: an extended at-home vacation :-) ), Apple made me an offer that would have been foolish to refuse, and so after nearly seven years, I'm back at Apple. But things have changed a lot - the next generation Mac OS X is a real live BSD Unix system with a GUI on top. Indeed, according to the current plan, OS X will be shipping on all new Macs soon, which will effectively make it the first mass-market personal computer with a Unix as the default OS. And as if that weren't exciting enough, the development is all done with GNU! The tools team here has been madly hacking on GCC and GDB. Up to now, they've been mostly scrambling to keep everything working for the OS bringup, but in the long term, Apple wants to resync with the FSF versions, and one of my tasks is to help make that happen. This will certainly involve a combination of contributing some patches, discarding others, and in some cases continuing to maintain them separately. We'll also be expanding the development group, since there are a number of bigger projects that Apple is interested in, such as faster compilation, better PowerPC code, libgdb, and C++ debugging improvements. Initially, my highest-priority activities for Apple will mainly be related to GCC, although I will be working on GDB as well. RMS is about ready to announce the new steering committee, and one of its first jobs will be to decide how to run GDB maintenance henceforth; this will be a chance to think about whether to retain the status quo or to come up with a new system. So if you haven't already expressed yourself on the subject :-), please tell everybody on this list how you wish things would be done in the future. Stan shebs@apple.com ------------------------------------------------------- -- -- Kevin B. Hendricks Associate Professor of Operations and Information Technology Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario London, Ontario N6A-3K7 CANADA khendricks@ivey.uwo.ca, (519) 661-3874, fax: 519-661-3959 ** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/