Greg Haerr writes:
>
>
>
> I'm a little new to this project, but here's what I think
> The ELKS project source code should be kept as clean as possible, of course.
> Running lint is a good idea, but the source also should be regularly
> compiled (not
> necessarily run, just compiled) using a sophisticated error-checking
> compiler
> like gcc on occasion (built into makes is relatively easy). But - in order
> to get all that neat type checking etc, the source needs to be in ANSI
> declaration
> format. Ansi compilers won't perform type checking if function prototypes
> aren't used.
> In this way gcc checks all sorts of neat stuff, and bcc can use it's -ansi
> option
> to run unproto on the source for the real ELKS make.
>
> However, this is only the beginning. The real answer is that bcc needs to
> become
> an ANSI compiler. A tall order maybe, but, I've already started in this
> direction.
> The real reason for this is that I'm personally interested in small,
> self-hosted systems
> that include OS, Compilers, linkers and libraries that can self-replicate
> themselves...
> Anyway, back to the subject. I see bcc moving to ansi in two steps. First
> step
> is to get it to compile 100% ansi compliant source input without
> complaining. The second
> step is to get it to perform type-checking and implement the new ansi
> features.
>
> So, I've debugged bcc's TESTING_PROTOTYPES code and got it to accept ansi
> compliant function definitions. I've also fixed the macro preprocessing for
> closer ansi-compliance.
> I've added #elif and #error, etc. To check the compiler, I've ported bcc,
> as86 and ld86 to
> a test MINIX 2.0 system that I've put up, and am currently recompiling
> minix's libc routines,
> which all use ansi. Currently, I'm working on const and typedef'd function
> declarations.
> I'll be checking all this in to Rob de Bath when I'm done, and of course
> will check that ELKS
> still works.
>
> So, I think we should use these compiler changes to allow the ELKS source to
> move
> to an ansi-compliant status, become checked, while we continue to build our
> tools, etc.
>
> Does anyone want to help "proto-izing" elks?
>
If bcc can be converted so that it cleanly compiles ansi code, then I would
be in favour of converting the ELKS code so that we could then use gcc to
check it. I will hold judgement until Rob makes his opinion known on the
practicality of this.
Al
