Memory Pool System Build Notes

Introduction

This document contains build notes for the Memory Pool System Kit.

The readership of this document is anyone who wants to build MPS binaries from the sources. Read the readme.txt file first.

This document is not complete; the MPS kit is buildable on many platforms that are not mentioned in these notes. The MPS kit is easy to modify such that it builds on many more.

This document is not confidential.

Related documents

readme.txt

This contains notes on building the MPS from a "kit".

MPS build system

Brief notes on the keywords used in the build system commands.

MPS product procedures

Links to separate procedures for making builds for a release.

Platform support

The MPS has historically been built on many platforms that are either now obsolete or to which we don't have convenient access.

Operating Systems

  OS????

  ia    Irix 6 N32 ABI
  li    Linux
  o1    OSF/1 aka Tru64
  so    Solaris 5.x and successors
  su    SunOS 4.x
  s7    Mac OS 7 through 9

CPU Architectures

  ??AR??

  al    ALPHA AXP
  i3    Intel IA-32
  i4    Same as i3 (a mistake)
  m4    MIPS IV
  pp    PowerPC (32-bit)
  s8    SPARC v8
  s9    SPARC v9 (32-bit)
  m6    Motorola 68K family

Compiler Toolchains

  ????CC

  cc    Vendor Supplied CC
  gc    GCC
  eg    EGCS
  cx    SunPro C CXREF tool
  gp    GCC with profiling
  mv    Microsoft Visual C
  m9    Microsoft Visual C 9.0 (temporary designation)
  sc    SunPro C
  ac    Apple Mr C
  mw    Metrowerks Codewarrior

The full list of platforms that have ever been supported:

fri4gc  Maintained
i5m2cc  Not maintained (no makefile)
iam4cc  Not maintained
lii3eg  Not maintained
lii4gc  Maintained
lippgc  Not maintained
o1alcc  Not maintained
o1algc  Not maintained
s7m6mw  Not maintained (no makefile)
s7ppac  Not maintained
s7ppmw  Not maintained
sos8cx  Not maintained
sos8gc  Not maintained
sos8gp  Not maintained
sos9sc  Not maintained
sus8gc  Not maintained
w3almv  Not maintained (no makefile in trunk)
w3i3mv  Maintained
w3i3m9  Maintained
w3ppmv  Not Maintained (no makefile in trunk)
xci3gc  Maintained
xcppgc  Maintained (in sunset)

Platforms listed as "maintained" are used at Ravenbrook and the MPS should work well on them. OS X on PowerPC (xcppgc) is in decline as Apple have moved to Intel architecture and are no longer shipping PowerPC based systems.

Platforms are generally listed as "not maintained" if Ravenbrook doesn't have access to a suitable machine. Should you have access to such a platform though, you should find that the MPS works on it. You may have to spring-clean and update the relevant makefiles (which we have left for exactly this purpose, even though we are unable to maintain them). New files are added and sometimes reorganised which sometimes requires changes to makefiles; we can't do this for platforms we don't have access to. Also compiler options often need tweaking from release to release.

Generally support is modularised in way that makes it fairly easy to "fill in the gaps". So that, for example, the MPS support for the SPARC architecture could in principle be used on a Linux/SPARC platform. In practice the interfaces to architecture dependent stuff tends to be dependent on the operating system and toolchain being used. For combinations like FreeBSD/MIPS, Solaris/IA-32 which exist, but which we've never had access to, it wouldn't be hard to get the MPS going on them.

Unix

Note that the first build in a clean directory will produce warnings because the dependency files (*.d) do not yet exist. The warnings look like this:
comm.gmk:533: xcppgc/hi/mpsi.d: No such file or directory
The warnings are normal and do not indicate a problem. After the warning is emitted, the build-system makes the dependency file. Subsequent builds in the non-clean directory see these dependency files and do not emit the warning.

Mac OS X

2005-02-02
Building on early releases of Mac OS X (DP3? 10.1?) required various workarounds to get a clean compile. These workarounds have now been removed from master sources. RHSK. See <ravenbrook.com/project/mps/issue/job000602/>

2006-10-10
Intel Macs. It's now possible to use xci3gc.gmk to build on Intel architectures. Threads not supported.

2007-12-21
Building on early releases of Mac OS X (DP3? 10.1?) required various (now unnecessary) compiler flags to suppress warnings from Mac OS X header files. These warnings are no loner suppressed. Additionally, an obsolete flag for GDB (debugging) output is beleived no longer necessary, and has been reverted. See <ravenbrook.com/project/mps/issue/job001714/>

Windows

2005-10-06 (1.105)
All MPS versions are now built with /Gs (for compilations) and /GZ (for linking). This suppresses stack probe / stack check, which would otherwise require __chkesp from C library. This change was necessary to enable the new DLL version of the MPS, "mpsdy.dll". RHSK. See <ravenbrook.com/project/mps/master/manual/supplement/dll-notes/>

2010-03-03 (1.109.0)
New platform "w3i3m9" -- using Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0
This platform is a clone of w3i3mv; the only differences are:

• compiler and linker options (see commpre9.nmk);
• use w3i3m9.nmk (not w3i3mv.nmk) to build it;
• the MPS_PF_STRING in version.c is "w3i3m9" (not "w3i3mv").

2011-08
The w3i3m9 platform has been withdrawn from the mainline and w3i3mv is once again the master NT platform.

The Windows linker can accept a .def file to allow re-export of MPS functions from a client executable that includes the MPS, such that other client DLLs can link to and call those MPS functions. See the w3gen.def file (renamed mps-fns.def for Configura releases). A suitable command-line fragment might be "/def:w3gen.def". See <ravenbrook.com/project/mps/issue/job001936/>

References

Document history

C. Copyright and License

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