On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Donald Ian Wilson wrote:
> The question is this: I want to recompile my kernel, optimized for the
> G4 chip. Obviously, GCC isn't going to do this. I'm assumeing there
> must be a way to compile the kernel without being in linux
> itself...how else would the first kernel of each new port be compiled?
With a copy of GCC built for cross-compilation running on a different
architecture (and possibly running something other than Linux, but why?).
Consider Linux for Merced was probably bootstrapped without the help of a
"native" OS as it was originally running on simulators before the chip was
even available.
The kernel can only be built with GCC. Unfortunately, ANSI C is missing a
few things that are critical to making a high-performance kernel, most
importantly inline functions and inline assembly. Linking pragmas are
becoming increasingly important as well. So we're forced to break with
portability between compilers. Not generally a problem, as GCC is very
widely ported.
I'm not much of a PowerPC maven any more, so I don't know what's different
between the "G3" and "G4", but I suspect for kernel code the optimization
possibilities are pretty limited and involve hand-tuning anyway so simply
using another compiler isn't going to buy much.
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