gdc needs to support AARCH64

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gdc needs to support AARCH64 #43

Closed truedat101 closed 5 years ago

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

Basically, raspi support + all major new phone architectures. Need to verify that it can indeed be built from ArchLinux.

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

see: https://buildbot.dgnu.org/#/builders/2/builds/51

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

There is a discussion about CI build servers which sounds very serious (like real commitment): http://forum.dlang.org/post/mailman.4381.1499385927.31550.d.gnu@puremagic.com

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

Looking at their build servers, I can't find where they have buildci.sh. This might tell something about an optimal configuration.

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

So I have posted a question to the above thread about my build on an espressobin. Several differences:

not cross compiling, building a native GDC compiler
Unless "arm" is detected as a platform by the version() conditional compilation https://dlang.org/spec/version.html , math.d for sure won't compile
on my platform, it appears that it doesn't think it is arm, and no where in math.d is there a reference to AARCH64, which tells me that nobody builds compilers on target devices ... everyone uses cross compilers. Otherwise, the team on gdc would catch this situation. I would gander that "everyone else", not on the gdc team, either (a) does not care or (b) is using a package or (c) has written off D on AARCH64.

I should note that the following language runtimes are fully supported on AARCH64:

rust
go
nim
node.js

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

I've built D on openWRT which was not easy. gdc. That was brutal.

This has been worse, and the situation is frustrating because:

The GDC docs for building (wiki) never change
The GDC buildbot appears to succeed for aarch64.
I can't build gdc on a raspi3 (as of a year ago), an espressobin (just yesterday) using gdc-6, or on a new platform like the Nvidia Jetson TX2 (ok so it's not really new) with ubuntu.
The gdc packager on archlinux quit or whatever
gdc on ubuntu is a train wreck ... what do you actually need to do/install to make this work? Install libphobos? What else is needed.

Signing off for now.

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

I will try to help the LDC project #45 folks and see where that gets me, but in the meantime, I will need to use a different programming language on my aarch64 platforms. 🤕

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

I recall that crosstool-ng is the preferred way to compile for these crap platforms: https://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Cross_Compiler/crosstool-NG

I believe on one of my systems I have this all staged and ready to go. Perhaps this will "just work". TBD. Not sure I want to waste more time.

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

My goal is of course, get some clear cut way to build for ArchLinux ARM platforms. Declare victory.

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

If I can get the base build down I can work with Kevin from the Arch Linux ARM project to get packages going.

truedat101 commented 6 years ago

Well, got a response from the gdc team. Not looking good. So the builds that I see on the buildbot are marked as succeeding but they are skipping tests, and I think it's a cross compiler. This is a bummer. Mark another year gone by without AARCH64 support, a major major platform. 🐢

truedat101 commented 5 years ago

I'm sort of losing hope on this front. I think funding is required to make serious progress on gdc, although it all should be very feasible because gcc is the basis for the front end work.

truedat101 commented 5 years ago

Looks like this is done. See #44 .