Re: Forth for Mac OS X Leopard (Intel) - what are the options?

On Apr 8, 8:18 am, Albert van der Horst <alb...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

> I wrote:
> >Now porting Lina:
>
> >First, the (hopefully) easy bit. Unfortunately I think the order of
> >parameters is reverse from the way your hard coded words in Lina call
> >the _syscall mechanism you use to call the linux kernel (ie LINOS and
> >LINOS5).
>
> >The 2 ways that immediately come to my mind to fix this are
>
> >1.  the more predictable one is to fix LINOS and LINOS5 to reorder the
> >stack and then do an int 0x80. I think I favour this lazy way out as
> >the other way would be to rewrite all the words that call LINOS and
> >LINOS5. The advantage of course is user code calling said functions
> >won't be broken. The code to do this is ugly however - see right
> >below.
>
> This is the way to go. That is where LINOS was factored out for.

Ok, that's the way to go then. I will have to wade thru the syscalls
and see how different they actually are. I do know certain io calls on
my first build do bomb for a fact, I don't know why yet. When I am
more awake I'll fire it up and take it apart.


> >2. Just rewrite the prebuilt forth words to reorder the parameters. A
> >little bit more work but doable but user code out there could be
> >broken. However I expect few people would be calling LINOS directly...
> >or maybe I am wrong.
>
> LINOS is used in the library, so you would have to patch the
> library too. No it is not a good idea.

Ok I _thought_ there would be code out there that would get broken :)

How did you make this portable between WINA, MINA etc? Do those
versions call 'LINOS' as well? Or is it the case that the ciforth
builder builds a different library for each OS.

> >All potentially a pleasant evening's work EXCEPT
>
> >*** LINKING ***
> ....snip...
> If the elf format is used, that is already nice, because it is
> well documented.
>
> Use a standard assembler if available.
> Use the standard linker.
> See what happens.
> E.g. with nasm on linux
>         nasm -felf lina.asm -o lina.o
>         ld lina.o -o lina
> It doesn't get much simpler than that.
> It worked when I knew nothing more about the elf-format
> than that it existed.
> Now SAVE-SYSTEM was a little more work.

I have NOT managed to get an elf binary to link on the mac :) Maybe
I'm doing something wrong. I had to wing it (see the source) and make
a best guess on what a mach-o was like and build it th way it is.

Can OS X run ELFs? I am not sure if they can. If someone does know
please do let me know.

> >As for me, I've been awake the whole weekend at work and spent the
> >whole morning resetting my clock doing this, so it's time for bed
> >before I start looking at it any further.
>
> I'm kind of busy at the moment, but I'll try to have a look at
> your source tonight.

Take your time, I'm gonna be crazy busy again for a week or so
anyways. Again, thank you for making ciforth / lina available. I
hadn't realized what a gem lina was.

I'll leave the source where it is now but I may try and get it a more
permanent spot somewhere else.

*** And thanks to all the rest of you for the pointers on where to
look for stuff. I don't know if xcode actually put the XNU source yet
on my HD - my intel mac is still new :) but that's where I shall head
first now.

Thanks

Robert Spykerman