Re: RISC-V Support for GNUstep

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi Lars,
ah, now I get your point which is indeed a point and not a big area :)
Maybe the title was misleading because too broad.

You want RISC V support specifically for libobc2 (and clang) where I don't know 
if it exists or how mature it is.

> Am 07.10.2021 um 23:43 schrieb lars.sonchocky-helldorf@hamburg.de:
> 
> Hi Nikolaus,
> 
> 
> I am especially interested in ObjC 2 support, hence I’d like to see 
> https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2 being ported (and it needs to, as I 
> understand it). 
> 
> I guess you’re satisfied with GCC’s runtime which you need for your legacy 
> hardware (Sharp Zaurus and the like). Since the GCC ObjC runtime contains no 
> assembler it probably works out of the box (I have no experience here).

I haven't as well, it is just the observation that libgnustep-base was 
obviously successfully compiled for Debian Sid.

https://packages.debian.org/sid/riscv64/libobjc4/filelist

A quick look into https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2 seems to indicate that 
there is a need for a objc_msgSend.riscv.S in parallel to 
https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/blob/master/objc_msgSend.arm.S (ca. 200 
lines of assembler code).
Everything else is C, C++ or Obj-C code.

Best regards,
Nikolaus

> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
>       Lars
> 
>> Am 07.10.2021 um 22:20 schrieb H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns@goldelico.com>:
>> 
>> Hi Lars,
>> I think besides objc-compiler support there is nothing special needed for 
>> RISC V (or other processor architectures like i386, arm, mips, ppc).
>> 
>> If you look at
>> 
>> https://packages.debian.org/sid/gnustep-base-runtime
>> https://packages.debian.org/sid/libgnustep-base1.27
>> 
>> you will see that there is experimental riscv64 support in Debian Sid, e.g. 
>> compiled binary libs:
>> 
>> https://packages.debian.org/sid/riscv64/libgnustep-base1.27/filelist
>> 
>> So IMHO there is no gap or anything special to do. Like for most other 
>> user-space code (unless you want to use architecture specific features like 
>> vector instruction sets).
>> 
>> What I can't judge is how buggy basic objective c support is.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Nikolaus
>> 
>> 
>>> Am 07.10.2021 um 19:19 schrieb lars.sonchocky-helldorf@hamburg.de:
>>> 
>>> Hi David,
>>> 
>>> 
>>> well, I didn’t consider if you (and others) are aware of RISC-V. Therefore 
>>> I post some basic, introductory links regarding RISC-V FYI now:
>>> 
>>> https://riscv.org
>>> 
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V
>>> 
>>> 
>>> kind regards,
>>> 
>>>     Lars
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Am 07.10.2021 um 19:09 schrieb David Wetzel <dave@turbocat.de>:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi!
>>>> 
>>>> Did I miss something regarding risc?
>>>> I thought many companies are now looking to go to ARM?
>>>> Also on their servers. 
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> 
>>>> David
>>>> 
>>>> Von meinem iPhone gesendet
>>>> 
>>>>> Am 2021-10-07 um 12:53 schrieb lars.sonchocky-helldorf@hamburg.de:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi fellow GNUsteppers,
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am thinking about purchasing a HiFive Unmatched 
>>>>> https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched board for helping to port 
>>>>> GNUstep and especially the GNUstep ObjC runtime to RISC-V.
>>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>