Older gcc for MacOS

[Joel Sherrill]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 3:00 PM Chris Johns <chrisj at rtems.org> wrote:
>
> On 8/1/22 9:34 am, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 4:17 PM Chris Johns <chrisj at rtems.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 8/1/22 8:28 am, Ryan Long wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Our MacOS VM is failing to build several of the tools on the RTEMS 5 branch. We
> >>> think that using an older version of gcc should get all of the tools to build. I
> >>> tried build gcc-4.8 with the RSB, but I get the following error.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> tester at VM-MacOS bare % ../source-builder/sb-set-builder
> >>> --prefix=${HOME}/rtems-cron-5/tools/gcc-48 gnu-tools-4.8.2
> >>> RTEMS Source Builder - Set Builder, 5 (6225eadda1de modified)
> >>> Build Set: gnu-tools-4.8.2
> >>> error: gnu-tools-4.8.2:24: cannot find file: devel/gcc-4.8.2-newlib-cvs-1
> >>> Build Set: Time 0:00:00.000607
> >>> Build FAILED
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Does anyone know how to get these tools to build?
> >>>
> >>
> >> It looks like the recipe has rotted.
> >
> > Was there a native gcc recipe? The name includes newlib which would
> > imply it is intended for use with RTEMS.
>
> The `bare/config` tree had recipes to build bare metal tool chains.
>
> > Also clearly old with cvs in the name.
> >
> > Having the ability to build an older gcc would ease the burden of
> > using 5 on newer FreeBSD, Linux, etc with stricter compilers. As
> > with everything, doing it with the RSB gives us control.
>
> Yes but do we want to head down that path?

What's the alternative? Updating the tools on older branches?

The host environments and the released RTEMS versionN build requirements
are two different sets which should overlap nicely at a point at time but
as OSes update and the RTEMS build requirements stay fixed, things go
downhill.

--joel

> Chris