Post Av2Dwp0oR8zmbnpy76 by datenwolf@chaos.social
 (DIR) More posts by datenwolf@chaos.social
 (DIR) Post #Av2DwYR842wfCV1FGy by datenwolf@chaos.social
       2025-06-07T10:05:28Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       All I want is just a collection of #binutils, #GCC, #llvm+#clang, #glibc and #musl that are "free standing" / relocatable, which I can pack into a #squashfs image to carry around to my various development machines.You'd think that for something as fundamental as compiler infrastructure with over 60 years of knowledge, the whole bootstrapping and bringup process would have been super streamlined, or at least mostly pain free by now.Yeah, about that. IYKYK
       
 (DIR) Post #Av2DwgQiLTMnzWt1jk by datenwolf@chaos.social
       2025-06-07T10:14:31Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Without looking at how other people approach it, I think the only really viable method to make GCC relocatable is to build it for an installation prefix of the form/${UNIQUE128BITS/usrand then just wrap every executable with a loader that hooks open(2) (and equivalents), replacing that unique stem with the absolute path, determined from the wrapper executable's path.My gut feeling is, that LLVM+clang should be more tolerant of relocation.
       
 (DIR) Post #Av2DwgQiLTMnzWt1jl by datenwolf@chaos.social
       2025-06-11T22:10:41Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Okay, I think I'm making some headway here. Turns out, going *backward* in terms of toolchains is a surprisingly painful process. Support for newer language versions will trip over ambiguities found in older versions of libc.Guided by https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap but entirely manually I now have a tcc/musl bootstrapping environment, with static libgmp, libmpfr and libmpc that should support binutils and then bootstrapping GCC-4.x. From there I should be able to climb the ladder.
       
 (DIR) Post #Av2Dwp0oR8zmbnpy76 by datenwolf@chaos.social
       2025-06-11T22:19:10Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Fingers crossed.However, this whole ordeal really calls for the #GCC developers to reevaluate their stance on not providing pre-built binaries: At the moment there exists no ground-truth bootstrapping environment for the GNU Toolchain. There are no working downloads left for Stage0 Boostrap.I presume their stance stems from the philosophy that software should be distributed in source code form to allow for modification and wide adaptability. This mindset works for anything except compilers.
       
 (DIR) Post #Av2DwwhFrk6YRSkSjw by datenwolf@chaos.social
       2025-06-11T22:22:59Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Compilers, specifically the self hosting kind are a weird kind of animal. Their source code is of little use, without having a working compiler in the first place. Heck, I'd not surprised if the GPL was tested in courts in the context of compilers, then it could be ruled, that a compiler source distribution also must include self-contained bootstrap capable binaries of the compiler for every supported target architecture, or some virtual machine IR (wasm anyone)?