On 19 Jan 2015 at 23:09, Kevan Hashemi wrote:
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I am not aware of any person that build GNU Pascal on Windows in 64-bit mode.
Having helped with porting GPC to Win32, I have never tried this. I do not think that it will be a trivial task.
I tried, but failed. I needed substantial help from Dave Bryan just to get the 32-bit compile to work. So, on Windows 64-bit machines I use the 32-bit MinGW, and that's fine.
I also find the Win32 compiler perfectly fine for my needs.
The 64-bit MinGW seems to be a significant diversion from the 32-bit, but in theory the compile is of course possible. I have a student this summer who I will apply to the project, but it may be too much for him. In the long run, I'm hoping to have one of my people figure out how to compile GPC with a newer version of GCC, which I think will make the 64-bit compile easier. I understand that this update would require a lot of work, but I don't have any clear idea of what the work is. So my first step will be to have my summer student figure out what has to be done.
You would need to patch the gcc sources, and most likely would need to amend the gpc sources as well - particularly the gpc runtime library.
Peter, Frank and Waldek would be the most knowledgeable about the kinds of patch that would be needed for the gcc and gpc compiler sources (there must be certain principles that govern what changes would need to be made). If you want to have an idea of the level of work required, look at the gcc patches in the gpc/p/diffs directory. You may also need to patch some of the code in the p/rts and p/units directories, although one would hope that this would not be necessary.
From what I can rememner, we needed to do a number of hacks for the
Win32 libgpc (see the os-hacks.h produced by me and Frank). I don't think, however, that this is compulsory for building the Win32 libgpc if one is not looking for certain Borland Pascal/Delphi compatibility features.
The RTS sources are already configured to look for os-hacks (header and lib) and to use it if found. So there is already an interface that should avoid the need to make too many OS-specific changes to the gpc sources themselves.
Best regards, The Chief -------- Prof. Abimbola A. Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) web: http://www.greatchief.plus.com/