shebs@Apple.COM (Stan Shebs) (02/20/91)
[Since a number of people seemed to have missed the November announcement of Gnu C for MPW, I'm reposting it. There have not been any later releases; we are looking at upgrading to GCC 1.39 and MPW 3.2, perhaps with a release sometime in the spring. Sorry, we're still not pursuing G++. Keep those cards and letters coming!] From: shebs@Apple.COM (Stan Shebs) Subject: Gnu C Compiler for MPW Unchained! Date: 29 Nov 90 23:01:19 GMT After much work and many delays (not all of them technical, ahem), we are very pleased to announce the public release of our port of the Gnu C Compiler (GCC) to MPW*. GCC is a highly optimizing ANSI C compiler; the MPW port is a drop-in replacement for MPW C, handling nearly all of Apple's extensions to C. GCC also includes many new capabilities, such as inline assembly code, aggressive function inlining, and nonconstant initializers. In addition, GCC comes with *complete*, well-structured and well-documented sources! (amazing but true!) MPW GCC is not a replacement for MPW C! You will need to have MPW 3.1 or later, MPW C, and MPW Asm. There is also a script for using GCC with MPW C++. Hardware requirements are a 68020/030+68881 Mac, and at least 2Mb RAM, with 4Mb is preferred. At the moment, MPW GCC is only available via anon ftp from apple.com. Look under pub/gnu.mpw; you have the choice of a complete distribution (about 4.4Mb packed, 8Mb unpacked) or a binary-only version (about 1Mb packed, 2Mb unpacked). Both of these must be transferred in BINARY mode, uncompressed, unbinhexed, and extracted via StuffIt (I used 1.5.1). You can also get MPW GCC from anybody else who has a copy. As per the Gnu Public License, you can copy, modify, and distribute MPW GCC as much as you want; just don't prevent anybody else from doing the same! There are plans afoot to make GCC available on a developer CD, probably within the next few months. This is probably the best approach if you're not in a hurry. If you have any problems or discover any bugs, please let us know about them! The address "mpwgcc@apple.com" will forward to me and other support folks; mailing me directly will also work, but the response will be slower. Incidentally, MPW GCC is *not* a supported product; fortunately, you've got all the sources you need to fix problems... Have fun! Stan Shebs Apple ATG System Software shebs@apple.com *In case anyone didn't know, MPW is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc... From: shebs@Apple.COM (Stan Shebs) Subject: Clarification about MPW C vs MPW GCC Date: 30 Nov 90 19:44:28 GMT In yesterday's announcement of the release of MPW GCC, I said that you need to have MPW C in order to use GCC. Some people were confused, so here's a clarification: MPW GCC is actually a script "gC" and a pair of tools "cpp" and "cc1". Their output is an assembly file that must be passed through Asm. So, the MPW C compiler is not directly involved. If you have your own includes and C runtime libraries, you can use those to build apps, but most people are going to want to use the set that comes with MPW C (and which is *not* included in the GCC distribution). MPW GCC can compile itself, but it also assumes that the MPW C includes and libraries are available. Too, in order to build a GCC that will run on 68000+SANE machines, it is necessary to compile it with MPW C (a bug that we've never fixed, sorry). Finally, we assume that GCC users already have a copy of the MPW C manual, so we don't include any details about Apple's C extensions. To summarize, MPW C is not strictly necessary to use MPW GCC, but it's not really practical to use MPW GCC without it. Stan Shebs Apple ATG System Software