Re: Status of newlib development (fwd)

[Doug Evans <devans@cygnus.com>]

   From: Alvin Oga <aoga@imedia.com>
   Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 19:16:45 -0800 (PST)

   > I downloaded newlib-1.8.0 and need to be able to compile
   > it on a linux box...
   > 
   > Questions:
   > 1.  what is the status of porting to linux ?

There is none, nor is any intended, though if you want to do it
and it doesn't involve many changes to the configury (i.e. doesn't
complicate the other ports any), then we could certainly look at a port
if submitted.

One question is, why would one want to do this?
For fun?

I'm assuming you're talking about making linux the "target" and not
the "host" (right?).  In a cross compiler (or any compiler), the "host"
is the system the compiler runs on and the "target" is the system
the generated code will run on.  There's nothing to do if you want
to make, say, a linux cross foo cross compiler (foo != linux of course :-).

Linux already has a C and math library, and being intended for embedded
systems newlib is missing oodles of things one would want from a C
library (e.g. all the system calls).

   > 2.  Can we hire your porting expertise to port newlib  to linux ?

I can't say but I seriously doubt this is something Cygnus would want to do.
Newlib just isn't intended for hosted systems (other than go32 and cygwin32,
and only then because something was needed - linux doesn't fall into
this category).

   > from my limited understanding of porting.. we need to:
   > 	- fix configure to create the appropriate Makefiles for linux
   > 	- fix *.c and *.h files for linux dependencies
   > 	- test and test and test ?

If you really want to do this,
I would pick an existing port and study how that is done.