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How to build old source code with latest GCC?

Answer 1

A:

You could download here: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/

The most correct way is to download the old version and install in a directory outside of your PATH.

The GCC has changed much from version 2 to 4 ...

Tiago Natel 2010-09-12 05:00:02

Thanks for your answer. I have downloaded the gcc 2.95.2. But it needs to be compiled first. So what gcc version should I use to compile old version gcc? I have tried with gcc 4.3.2. But it just failed.

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 05:14:36

Is there a pre-compiled version of old version gcc so I can just install it.

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 05:19:02

Your distribution may have a version of gccolder than 4.3 in the repositories, which might be able to compile the positively ancient 2.95.2. You could also try working your way backward from 4.3 to the oldest it can still compile, and then repeat that from there.

Novelocrat 2010-09-12 05:55:50

I believe you have to compile the 3.3 version from your gcc-4 and then build to 2.95 from 3.3 ...

Tiago Natel 2010-09-12 06:52:20

You can try to compile your code with gcc-3.*, has a good chance of working :)

Tiago Natel 2010-09-12 06:56:27

Thanks guys. I am starting my time travelling... I'll let you know when I am back...

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 12:46:05

Hi Tiago, your suggestion works. I have just built the gcc 3.3.6. but how could I replace my gcc 4.3.2 with the newly built one?

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 13:42:16

Currently, I just change the link of /usr/bin/gcc to my 3.3.6 version. Is that ok enough?

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 14:01:46

Now I am trying to making the gcc 2.95.2

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 14:32:06

2.95.2 cannot built with 3.3.6. But the oskit claims to be able to be built with gcc 2.7.x besides 2.95.2. So I took a gcc 2.7.2.3 source. I build with the this sequence: 4.3.2->3.3.6->2.7.2.3, it's a success (though I found that 4.3.2 -> 2.7.2.3 is also built-able). But the OSKit is still broken with 2.7.2.3... Currently I don't know what to do... :(

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 15:31:41

@smwikipedia: You should be able to build 2.95 with 2.7.

caf 2010-09-13 00:52:40

That's a good suggestion. I'll try when I get back home. Thanks caf.

smwikipedia 2010-09-13 01:57:12

Answer 2

+1 A:

I believe that you need something like:

 asm volatile("pushfl\n\t"
              "popl %0"
              : "=r" (eflags)
             );
 return eflags;

Ref: GCC-Inline-Assembly-HOWTO

Clifford 2010-09-12 07:59:38

Thanks for your reply. Yes, but the question is there're so much code like these. They can compile with gcc 2.95.2, but not with 4.3.2. How could I install a gcc 2.95.2? I got gcc 4.3.2 on my box and I tried to compile the 2.95.2 source code with it. But failed.

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 08:55:40

I cannot believe that the backward compatibility of gcc is so terrible...

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 08:58:29

You could write a preprocessor to correct the syntax in bulk.

Clifford 2010-09-12 09:15:51

Thanks Clifford. But I'm afraid that approach is much prone to error.

smwikipedia 2010-09-12 15:34:41

@smwikipedia: Grepping the final (2002) oskit snapshot only turns up around 200 places where `asm volatile` or `__asm__ volatile` is used. Many of those are not multi-line and would not need to change. You could manually retrofit all of those in a matter of hours, and then move on to all of the other problems that you will undoubtedly encounter in trying to revive a source tree that has been abandoned for 8 years. :)

bk1e 2010-09-12 18:04:20

@smwikipedia: And building an ancient compiler from source isn't!? Not only is it not a significant effort (even manually as bk1e points out), but the resulting code base may well benefit from being built with teh more up-to-date compiler.

Clifford 2010-09-12 18:22:34

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