Paul Wratt wrote:
this looks like a good way to go, presuming that v4e does not need any patches applied to source, or is that the point of the previous comments, that it still needs minimal patching (compared to other 68k variant output). BTW: why is there still a need to patch is the source is C/C++, wasn't that the point of another discussion re: ASM. I do however understand the need to patch for GCC 4.x "strictness" due to the age of sources...
Here are the facts.1) Older sources have *sometimes* to be patched for GCC 4.x "strictness". There are usually no GCC problem with up-to-date open-source programs. Sometimes the makefiles have to be revised a bit, too.
2) A C program that compiles well with GCC 4.x for 68000 will compile equally well for ColdFire. You just have to have the required libraries for ColdFire, and add the option -mcpu=5475 to the gcc command line. It worked flawlessly with all the few packages I have compiled an run on ColdFire.
3) Software fully or partially written in assembly will require manual patching to be 100% ColdFire. It is usually quite simple for user programs (as I did in the MiNTLib), but it is sometimes a bit tricky in OS software (as I did for EmuTOS).
Most Linux open-source software are written in C only, there will be no problem to get them work fully optimized on ColdFire.
Due to speed issues, traditional Atari software have often some parts written in assembly, if not all. They will require some more or less easy patching to be 100 ColdFire optimized. However it is not a big issue, since the the Atari ColdFire OS will embed a lightweight 68000 emulation. Thanks to the speed of the ColdFire, there will be no performance issue.
So the big problem is not rebuilding the whole SpareMiNT archive for ColdFire, it is rebuilding it with GCC 4.x. If we fix each package one after each other, there will be no problem. And if they are committed.
-- Vincent Rivière