[haiku-development] Re: Using the Haiku cross compilers for other projects

Hi Ryan,

> I've thought about this a lot. In my opinion porting involves adding
> to an existing source to have it run on a new system. Having to
> compile WebKit on GCC 2.95 (if that is even possible, which I doubt)
> would require a fork, not a port, because I have little confidence
> that the WebKit project would accept patches which riddle the code
> with #ifdefs and hacks to support an ancient compiler. I would rather
> not have to fork it.
> 
> I will make some more efforts to compile WebKit with GCC 2.95, but the
> initial #define problem does not give me much confidence it will go
> smoothly.

To tell you the truth, I'm quite proud of us that we managed to pull off 
binary compatibility with R5 and that we have shown it can be done, which 
many people doubted.

But.

Could we make a list of programs that we don't have the source for? Is there 
anything besides Gobe Productive that we would miss if we dropped binary 
compatibility? Just thinking out loud.... :-}

If I were you, I'd just continue with the porting effort on the basis of GCC 
4.x. It is going to be tough enough. Who knows how the situation will look 
like once you are farther down the road...

Instead of spending time on extending the Haiku loader, you could instead 
spend some time on documenting your porting effort somewhere online (your 
blog on Haiku-OS.org?) in the sense that you describe how to setup the 
development environment you are using, breaking down the project into 
sub-tasks and so on. So that you may get some help eventually. :-) I don't 
have the time right now, but my motivation has been there for quite some time 
to help with this effort ever since I heard of Nirvana. I'd enjoy it very 
much if there were instructions on the web how to prepare the coding 
environment if I suddenly find myself in the situation to be able to help. ;-)

Best regards,
-Stephan

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