GNU software working on my 3b1.

[Roger Florkowski]

First off, I'll list the GNU software that I have up and running on
my 3b1,  and a summary of what I needed to do to get each piece working.

	gcc-1.32	some minor bug fixes.
			Bootstrapped perfectly
			    - but I compiled it first with gcc-1.26.
	make-3.27	lots of sysV related fixes.
	diff-1.4	some minor bug fixes.
	grep-1.2	no changes.
	split		some minor sysV related fixes.
	bison		no changes.

Now a little summary of how the programs work.

	bison		seems to be a perfect yacc replacement,
			with much better dugging output when things go wrong.
	split		capable of splitting binary files.
	diff		many new options.  Its also much faster than /bin/diff
			Its also needed for RCS.
	grep		many new options.  The most useful (to me) is 
			'grep -C pattern', which gives a 'window' around
			the pattern, ie, 2 lines before, 2 lines after.
	make		supports RCS, ie, it checks the file out, compiles
			it, then removes the .o and .c when it done.
			Also supports ifdef'ed makefiles, which are great
			for constructing machine-to-machine compatible
			makefile.
	gcc		well, its not perfect yet.  It has compiled many
			working programs on my system,  but failed when
			I got to pax.  gcc-1.33 was just released,  so I'll
			provide a follow-up report next week.  The good
			new is that it is creating smaller, faster running
			programs than /bin/cc. Below I a small sample
			of 'sized' programs.  The .OLD ones were compiled
			with /bin/cc.

     diff: 24344(.text) + 92(.data) + 712(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	25148
 diff.OLD: 26708(.text) + 1104(.data) + 720(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	28532

    diff3: 6524(.text) + 100(.data) + 24(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	6648
diff3.OLD: 8004(.text) + 736(.data) + 24(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	8764

     make: 54736(.text) + 1624(.data) + 5520(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	61880
 make.OLD: 49316(.text) + 10756(.data) + 5520(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 65592

    split: 2640(.text) + 0(.data) + 28(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	2668
split.OLD: 2912(.text) + 572(.data) + 28(.bss) + 0(.lib) = 	3512


Now a quick side shoot into some other public domain stuff.

	shcc	- this is the best automatic shared library compiler driver
		that I have used.  I basically threw away cc when I got
		this up and running.  It needed one minor bug fix, though.
	pax	- this is a nice combination of tar and cpio.
		Like tar, it only backs up 1 copy of linked files.  (cpio
		copies each file into the archive, even though the are linked)
		Like cpio, it backs up empty directories.
		It knows how to write/read in both tar and cpio format.
		When reading an archive, it automatically figures out
		what type of archive you are feeding it.  We use it as our
		archiver on both our 3b1's and our Plexus p75.

Lastly, if anyone needs any pointers on any of this stuff, ask away.
Lots of people have been blasting GNU software on a 3b1.  I'm just providing
some good news here.  The stuff works, and I like it.

-- 
Roger Florkowski	       		{uunet!uvm-gen, attmail}!banzai!roger
The People's Computer Company			  `Revolutionary Programming'