Message from discussion 32-bit SharedCLibrary on the A9

Subject: Re: 32-bit SharedCLibrary on the A9
From: Peter Naulls <pe...@chocky.org>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 14:15:49 -0700
Message-ID: <01622cb24d.peter@chocky.org>
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In message <19f529b24d.phi...@philipnet.com>
          Philip Ludlam <nos...@philipnet.com> wrote:

>
> Now, with the advent of the A9, it seems that RISC OS Developments have
> produced their own 32-bit version of the SharedCLibrary.
> If one was being particularly bitter one might assume that there's still
> a big dispute between ROD and Castle ;-) .

Irrespective of that, the A9 requires _a_ 32-bit SCL of some
description.

> Presumably this version of the SharedCLibrary is going to find it's way
> onto other ROD products (maybe even Select 4!) so I'm going to have to
> bite the bullet and ammend the RMEnsure and hope that 5.17 or earlier of
> the other SharedCLibrary isn't lurking around anywhere.

"its way", perhaps.   But the situation is more complex than you
presume.  Castle's SCL contains quite a number of extra functions that
ROL's doesn't.  In practice, this means that any program linked with
Castle's stubs or indeed GCC's stubs will refuse to load at all on an A9
since ROL's SCL will not contain the extra chunks that refer to the
extra functions.  Programs can of course be linked with StubsG, which
may or may not be practical.

AIUI, Castle's distributed SCL cannot be loaded onto the A9, and it's
designed to be loaded onto 26-bit systems.  I don't know how practical
it would be (legalities aside) to load the SCL from RO5 ROM on the A9.
One solution would be for Castle to make their loadable SCL suitable for
the A9.  I don't know what would be involved with this.

Another more drastic, but perhaps ultimately more flexible solution,
would be for developers to take the bull by its horns, and develop their
own open source SCL, starting by taking code from UnixLib.  This would
level the playing field, and avoid inter-company politics.  I believe
the amount of work involved would not be that large.



-- 
Peter Naulls - pe...@chocky.org        | http://www.chocky.org/
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RISC OS C Programming                  | http://www.riscos.info/c/

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