Re: System compilation with simpler compiler

[Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 11:10:56 +0200, Giacomo Tesio wrote:

> Hi, sorry if this sounds as a naive question, but I was wondering if
> it's possible to build the NetBSD system with a simpler toolchain
> (compared to mainstream compiler suite such as GCC and CLang).
> 
> I can't find instructions on how to specify the various tools to
> build.sh and a first (naive and dumb :-D) attempt at building a kernel
> with tinycc through a simple "export CC=tcc" failed at make depend.
> 
> By simple compiler suite I mean compiler suite that only compile C,
> such as cproc+binutils or tinycc.
> 
> If such experiment has been attempted in the past, I'd like to read
> about it, even if it failed to deliver anything usable...

See EXTERNAL_TOOLCHAIN variable in share/mk/bsd.README - though it
might have bitrotted a bit...

I think the C parts of the tree used to be compilable with pcc (ragge@
is a netbsd developer).

-uwe