From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Sun,  9 Mar 2008 19:53:36 +0200
From: Aharon Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] GCC/G++: some stress testing
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu, lucio@proxima.alt.za
Message-id: <200803091753.m29HraqB004333@skeeve.com>
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> I really find it hard to believe that the best intellects in computing
> are incapable of stemming the tide.

I'm not sure they're aware it's an issue (CS professor and research types).

> As for P9GCC, its scope fairly exceeds (this) one person's
> capabilities.  Just looking at "binutils" and "bfd", without having
> the slightest idea what their real intent might be and how to apply it
> to P9GCC, then finding wonderful snippets such as

Binutils are the things for dealing with binaries: as, ld, nm are
the primary ones. They're built on top of BFD (Binary File Descriptor)
which is essentially an object-oriented way of looking at object
file formats; the tools can be configured to be cross platform
and even convert an object file in say, a.out format to COFF or
from COFF to ELF, and so on.

GDB uses the same framework so that it can be cross-platform
debugger.

I suspect you need to teach the binutils ('as') how to write the Plan 9
object file format, but it may be enough to teach GCC how to write
Plan 9 x86 assembler and then assemble it.

> Nevermind having
> to use my NetBSD server to read it and needing to learn a whole new
> documentation reading package to do it.

The 'info' reader is nothing to write home about, although the Texinfo
documentation language is one of the best markup languages I've ever
used. (I've written whole books in troff, Docbook SGML / XML and Texinfo,
and I'd take Texinfo any day.)

The best way to read Texinfo doc is to run

	makeinfo --no-split --hmtl file.texi

which produces one gignatic HTML file from the Texinfo source, and
then use a web browser to read it.

Another alternative is to use texi2pdf and then use a PDF viewer,
but I suspect that HTML will meet your needs the best.

Hope this helps,

Arnold