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From: Jan-Jaap van der Heijden
Subject: Main distribution line (Was: How should ...)
Date: 15 Apr 1997, 16:03:17

On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Frank Heckenbach wrote:

> 
> This goes back a few days...
> 
> Peter Gerwinski wrote:
> 
> >   * GPC's configuration scripts are written using `autoconf'.
> >     I have no idea how to implement such an option there.  But even if
> >     I had, it would disappear again when GPC will be integrated into
> >     the main distribution line of the GNU compiler.
> 
> Does this mean that gpc will then distributed widely and will be present on
> many (or most) systems? 

Not automatically. Peter was referring to my work to change to GPC
distribution to a model simular to g77 (GNU Fortran). GPC will
live in a subdirectory of the main GCC distribution (like g++, objc an
g77) and can then be built using `make LANGUAGES="pascal"'.  This fase is
mostly completed.

The benefits of this distribution model are:
1. Less problems configuring GPC for some unix platforms, because GCC does
   that for us.

2. Easier porting to new versions of GCC (I had little trouble porting GPC
   to pentium-GCC or a cygnus CDK for instance) (Yes -- then you have a
   true pentium-optimizing GPC)

The next step would be to convince the GNU's to distribute GPC _with_
GCC, but I would not expect that to happen in the near future.

> Now I had to make a version of my program in C
> because almost nobody had gpc installed - any hope that this situation will
> change? And are there any plans when this will happen - when gpc supports the
> standard(s) completely?

I think you would have to show the importance of Pascal for project GNU to
archieve this. A large GPC user community, assurance that GPC development
will continue over a long period to come, support for existing standards
and proven stability over a wide variety of platforms would probably be
another requirement.

I think we should get more attention of GNU enthousiasts first (be present
on alpha.gnu.mit.edu, maybe a small README in the main GNU distribution
sites, get into the GNU bulletin (if you look *real* good in the jan '97
issue, you can find a note saying a new release of gpc after some years of
stagnation was made, but I think we deserve some more attention than this)

Anybody got some ideas?

JanJaap

---
  The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from
  -
  Andrew Tanenbaum

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