Re: QNX Neutrino (new targets, GPL) (fwd)

["Alain Magloire" <alain at qnx dot com>]

Bonjour

> > Who did you contact ? The src is made available on a per request basis.
> > Things are changing and what you got yesterday maybe obsolete tomorrow
> > so there is no point to make this widely available now.
> 
> I contacted QNX support about the sources, but I could not get them.

It was not a trick question, obviously somebody was ill-informed in
tech-support or sales or ...  just wanted to track it down.

> [snip] 
> > "Distributing GCC for a long time"  QNX as been using Watcomm C, and the
> > shift was done to GNU gcc for QNX/Neutrino and it is not even release yet.
> > Maybe you are talking about JC Michot port of gcc for QNX and Neutrino
> > 1.0 beta/alpha, then you take this up with him.
> 
> QNX/Neutrino 2.0 was released a year ago and this includes the QNX 4
> hosted tools.

Ha ! yes, but things has drasticly change since then.

> The 1.0 alpha version you are talking about is from late
> 1996, although I don't know if this featured GNU development tools. The

No, Neutrino 1.0 used only Watcom.  Some other people may have
ported the GNU tool chains, but it was not done/distributed via QNX.

> Watcom compiler is only for QNX 4, not neutrino. Yes, JC Michot is the guy
> that originally ported the tools,

JC(not a QNX employee) did a port and it is widely use, outside and
even inside of QNX, this port used some hackery to get elf --> omf, by
using the watcom assembler(for QNX4).

> and QNX used this port to begin with (as I understand it).

We make no secret that we use sometimes JC tools internally, JC
made some outstanding contributions to QNX at large, and
he's a really nice person 8-).

> The version distributed by QNX for neutrino 2.0 is the JC Michot port.

No, QNX does not distribute Mr Michot tools, 

> I donīt know what people in QNX have worked on this recently.
> 

We've work on many things and some will never see the light of day
period, because of Watcom license restrictions etc ...

> Anyway, no sources are available from QNX or Mr. Michot. 
> 

Again we spelled out our plan to make a CVS repository, for the release
of Neutrino, if you are impatient you can get it by request.
As for Mr Michot(JC) you should take this up with him, QNX is not
responsible for this.

[snip]

> I do not understand what you mean by neutrino not being a released
> product, it certainly is: I have the installation/release media right
> here.

I was talking about the current version, it's not released yet,
Which is a total departure from what we have before.  Bringing
and OS to maturity, takes time, lots of time... and even
with nusering ... murphy's law.

> When I asked about the sources the answer was that no sources were
> available, they had been handed to the FSF.

I've forwarded your email to the tools-group, maybe they can trace
things back.  To my knowledge, when asked src were giving.  And I
even gave away my own (cross-compile Solaris)port,
yes it seems that everybody has there own little port 8-).

> I have not seen any source
> code from QNX being contributed to binutils or gcc. There is some support
> in config.{sub,guess} for QNX 4, but that is all (no actual code). QNX
> still has the responsibility to provide sources for GPL'd software they
> distribute, no matter what media is used.

I think QNX has clearly spelled out its plan, if you do not like ... tough.

> My port of the tools is available at http://www.acc.umu.se/~anorland/nto/
> for those interested. I'm willing to provide patches against the binutils
> development tree for inclusion in binutils if there is any interest in
> this. That, however, would seem pointless if QNX published their
> modifications.

Like for Mr Michot, you can do whatever you want with it.
Since NTO supports ELF, a port for x86 should be straight forward
by anyone. You just need to tweak the config files a bit.

This discussion is off-topic now for a tech. list like
binutils@,  contact your sales rep to get this fix.  If you feel
you've been treated unfairly, you can always drop me a private note.
Communications via different depts in a cie are always difficult and what
comes out from r+d sometimes get distorted in sales, tech-support or hr. 

-- 
au revoir, alain
----
Aussi haut que l'on soit assis, on n'est toujours assis que sur son cul !!!