On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> 
> On Feb 17, 2006, at 1:44 AM, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2006-02-16 19:28:39 +0100, Johnny Billquist <bqt@GW.SoftJAR.SE>
> > wrote:
> > > For starters, it would be nice if build.sh could run the whole way through
> > > a build. A new gcc would be very welcome as well, as would a working boot
> > > for netbooting.
> > 
> > Well, I think core gcc isn't at all in a bad shape. At least for
> > Linux, the VAX target only needs some minimal patches, mostly even
> > configury. Though I don't know how this is wrt. shared libs, or even
> > TLS (which needs implementation...)
> 
> PIC is the issue.

Are there any obstacles to supporting PIC on the VAX, other
than the time/effort required?

As far as I can see, not having particularly in-depth
knowledge of shared libraries, it seems that Position
Independent Code ought to be a lot easier on the VAX
than on many other CPUs, thanks to the availability of
PC-relative addressing for both code and data on the
VAX.  The lack of exactly that feature for data
references on the x86 (16/32) has always been a major
factor in complicating run-time relocation of code in
my search for methods to reduce the consumption of
"conventional" DOS memory for TSRs.  A fine example -
concerning shared libraries under BSD/Linux - can be
found at:

http://nasm.sourceforge.net/doc/html/nasmdoc8.html#section-8.2

-aw