RE: [ECOS] GNU toolchains for eCos 3.0

["Chris Zimman" <czimman at bloomberg dot com>]

> We have seen some toolchain bugs when moving away from the version
> released on the eCos website. Those tools might be old, but they are
> well tested and known to work well.



> On the other hand i always use the latest Debian unstable toolchain
> for the synthetic target. This has found toolchain bugs which i've
> reported back and had fixed. It has found eCos things which need work.
> 
> Using a new toolchain requires work for eCos. We need to fix all the
> new warnings. Some are easy. Some are hard. The network stack is
> particularly hard since it is old code and we want to minimise the
> changes to allow a more up to date import sometime in the future.

I fixed a ton of warnings when moving to EABI.  It's not hard work, just
takes a bit of time.  Any of the GCC 4.x targets should be roughly as strict
with regards to warnings.

I've had no issues with the network stacks to date regardless of compiler
version.

> I'm not the release manager, so i can only speculate from what has
> happened in the past. What i think will happen is that eCosCentric
> will donate a toolchain build for the common architectures. They will
> become the recommended toolchain for the next X years. We will fix up
> all the compiler warnings for these tools and do all the release
> testing with them.

I guess while this is possible, I don't think it's necessary.  eCosCentric
doesn't really support GCC per se -- they support it 'well enough to make
sure it works with eCos', but if something really goes wrong (eg. ICE),
you're kind of out of luck.  This was a primary motivator for me to do the
EABI port.  The CodeSourcery toolchain is actively supported and available
for free without paid support.

--Chris

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