README 5.0 KB

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  1. THE AMSTERDAM COMPILER KIT V6.0pre5
  2. ===================================
  3. © 1987-2005 Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
  4. 2013-05-15
  5. INTRODUCTION
  6. ============
  7. The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is a complete compiler toolchain consisting of
  8. front end compilers for a number of different languages, code generators,
  9. support libraries, and all the tools necessary to go from source code to
  10. executable on any of the platforms it supports.
  11. This is an early prerelease of the apocryphal version 6.0 release. Not a
  12. lot is supported, the build mechanism needs work, and a lot of things are
  13. probably broken. However, what's there should be sufficient to get things
  14. done and to evaluate how the full 6.0 release should work.
  15. SUPPORT
  16. =======
  17. Languages:
  18. ANSI C, Pascal, Modula 2, Basic. K&R is supported via the ANSI C compiler.
  19. Platforms:
  20. pc86 produces bootable floppy disk images for 8086 PCs
  21. linux386 produces ELF executables for PC Linux systems
  22. linux68k produces ELF executables for m68020 Linux systems
  23. cpm produces i80 CP/M .COM files
  24. rpi produces Raspberry Pi GPU binaries
  25. INSTALLATION
  26. ============
  27. The version 5.0 build mechanism has been completely rewritten. Installation
  28. ought to be fairly straightforward.
  29. Requirements:
  30. - an ANSI C compiler. This defaults to gcc. You can change this by setting
  31. the CC make variable.
  32. - flex and yacc.
  33. - GNU make.
  34. - about 40MB free in /tmp (or some other temporary directory).
  35. - about 6MB in the target directory.
  36. Instructions:
  37. - edit the Makefile. There's a small section at the top where you can change
  38. the configuration. Probably the only one you may want to edit is PREFIX,
  39. which changes where the ACK installs to.
  40. - Run:
  41. make # or gmake
  42. ...from the command line. This will do the build.
  43. The make system is fully parallelisable. If you have a multicore system,
  44. you probably want to do:
  45. make -j8 # or gmake -j8
  46. ...instead (substituting the right number of cores, of course). You can
  47. also shave a few seconds of the build time by using the -r flag.
  48. - Run:
  49. sudo make install
  50. ...from the command line. This will install the ACK in your PREFIX
  51. directory (by default, /usr/local).
  52. The ACK should now be ready to use.
  53. USAGE
  54. =====
  55. Currently I haven't sorted out all the documentation --- it's supplied in the
  56. distribution, but not all of it gets installed yet --- so here is a quickstart
  57. guide.
  58. The main command to use is 'ack'. This invokes the compiler and the linker.
  59. Some useful options include:
  60. -m<platform> build for the specified platform
  61. -o <file> specifies the output file
  62. -c produce a .o file
  63. -c.s produce a .s assembly file
  64. -O enable optimisation (optimisation levels go up to 6)
  65. -ansi compile ANSI C (when using the C compiler)
  66. -v be more verbose (repeatable)
  67. <file> build file
  68. ack figures out which language to use from the file extension:
  69. .c C (ANSI or K&R)
  70. .b Basic
  71. .mod Modula-2
  72. .ocm Occam 1
  73. .p Pascal
  74. .o object files
  75. .s assembly files
  76. .e ACK intermediate code assembly files
  77. For further information, see the man page (which actually does get
  78. installed, but is rather out of date).
  79. There are some (known working) example programs in the 'examples' directory.
  80. A sample command line is:
  81. ack -mlinux386 -O examples/paranoia.c
  82. GOTCHAS
  83. =======
  84. There are some things you should be aware of.
  85. - Look at plat/<PLATFORMNAME>/README for information about the supported
  86. platforms.
  87. - The library support is fairly limited; for C, it's at roughly the ANSI C
  88. level, and for the other languages it's similar.
  89. - When compiling languages other than C, the ACK will usually look at the
  90. first character of the file. If it's a #, then the file will be run through
  91. the C preprocessor anyway.
  92. - BSD systems may need to up the number of file descriptors (e.g.
  93. 'ulimit -n 200') before the ACK will compile.
  94. - The ACK uses its own .o format. You won't be able to mix the ACK's object
  95. files and another compiler's.
  96. DISCLAIMER
  97. ==========
  98. The ACK is mature, well-tested software, but the environment in which it was
  99. developed for and tested under is rather different from that available on
  100. today's machines. There will probably be little in the way of logical bugs,
  101. but there may be many compilation and API bugs.
  102. If you wish to use the ACK, *please* join the mailing list. We are interested
  103. in any reports of success and particularly, failure. If it does fail for you,
  104. we would love to know why, in as much detail as possible. Bug fixes are even
  105. more welcome.
  106. The ACK is licensed under a BSD-like license. Please see the 'Copyright' file
  107. for the full text.
  108. You can find the mailing list on the project's web site:
  109. http://tack.sourceforge.net/
  110. Please enjoy.
  111. David Given (dtrg on Sourceforge)
  112. dg@cowlark.com
  113. 2013-05-13