From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: downing.nick@gmail.com (Nick Downing)
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:54:26 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] 2.11BSD cross compiler
Message-ID: <AANLkTikjXZJ1W-0Ae5eZYfU2Kh+i+uCAB_-W=nFR-TmJ@mail.gmail.com>

hi everyone,

Just to let you all know that a few years ago I adapted the 2.11BSD
source so that it could be built on a modern system and transferred
across to the PDP-11.  The changes are:

1. The PDP-11 assembler was written in assembler so made a
line-by-line translation into C code.
2. The C compiler required access to PDP-11 math e.g. for constant
folding, so I inserted some code from Bob Supnik's emulator in those
places.
3. Basically everything that runs from a makefile (e.g. "sh", "make",
"yacc", etc) has been upgraded to a more modern coding style with non
portable code fixed up, independence on type sizes, prototypes added,
etc, and the build system now generates two versions where
appropriate, one for running locally (compiled with gcc or whatever
your local compiler is) and one for inclusion in the distribution
(compiled with the PDP-11 cross toolchain).
4. I also fixed a number of "just plain bugs" that obviously had
remained undiscovered under PDP-11 conditions.

I used conditional compilation and macros where appropriate so as not
to break the PDP-11's ability to run the toolchain locally.  I used a
binary comparison between the locally compiled build and the cross
compiled build to weed out bugs, and it did seem to be pretty robust
as I left it.  The only reason I didn't make this work available
generally (apart from laziness), was that there's quite a few
experimental changes in addition to points 1-4, for example:

5. A reworking of the (existing) system that extracts strings and puts
them in the code segment (necessary to get the PDP-11 to run large
executables such as nethack).  I can't really remember why I did this,
probably just to clean things up, but I don't think it's all that
essential so perhaps could be removed for the sake of minimal change.
6. Some changes to how "make" works, and to the Makefiles, intended to
clean things up, which in retrospect weren't essential and should be
removed (except for those changes necessary for point 3 above, need to
untangle it somehow).  I didn't get around to converting all Makefiles
so there's probably a bit of inconsistency there.  I might have broken
some things like "make tags" and "make depend", not sure.
7. Fortran stuff had to be disabled as the Fortran compiler is written
in assembly language (IIRC) and would probably be difficult to convert
into C (but I don't think this is a big deal).

If anybody volunteers to sift through the changes and sort out the
good from the dross then I will happily send the whole thing.

cheers, Nick