This is an "out of interest" question rather than being particularly important. I've managed to get my hands on an Itanium-based system for my collection, and find that it runs the x86 Linux variant of FPC fairly happily. However, GNU as and so on clearly don't know about x86 assembler: they expect the monstrosity that is IA-64.

I could obviously build appropriate binutils with the conventional naming prexies, but what is the preferred way of telling FPC/PPC which binutils to use? Is that where the CPU_TARGET and OS_TARGET shell variables come itno it, or are they only for use in makefiles?

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:

http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/buildfaq/#toc-Subsection-1.6.3

Is that where the CPU_TARGET and OS_TARGET shell variables come itno it, or are they only for use in makefiles?

http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/buildfaq/#toc-Section-1.6 point 5 in the list.

IIRC there is also a CROSSBINUTILSPREFIX in case you only have to override it for the "cross" part.

Thanks Marco, I'd missed -XP since I was mistakenly looking at the -A section.

For information, it works, but I'm getting an error when it calls the linker. If I link using a script it's fine:

~$ fpc -XPi486-linux- -sh test.pas
Free Pascal Compiler version 2.6.0 [2012/05/05] for i386 Copyright (c) 1993-2011 by Florian Klaempfl and others Target OS: Linux for i386
Compiling test.pas
Closing script ppas.sh
6 lines compiled, 0.8 sec
~$ ./ppas.sh
Linking test
/usr/local/bin/i486-linux-ld: warning: link.res contains output sections; did you forget -T?
~$ ./test
Hello, World!

Does x86-64 on Linux provide similar emulation, and does it also require a script for reliable operation?

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

For information, it works, but I'm getting an error when it calls the linker. If I link using a script it's fine:

It would help very much if you'd post the error that you get.

Regards,
Sven

I posted the minimum to report (partial) success in case the problem was considered below the threshold of interest.

I'm compiling binutils 2.20 using

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/i486-linux i486-linux-gnu

etc., and then setting up symlinks

/usr/local/bin/i486-linux-as -> /usr/local/i486-linux/bin/as

etc. When I do a direct compilation I get

~$ fpc -XPi486-linux- test.pas
Free Pascal Compiler version 2.6.0 [2012/05/05] for i386 Copyright (c) 1993-2011 by Florian Klaempfl and others Target OS: Linux for i386
Compiling test.pas
Linking test
test.pas(5,1) Error: Can't call the linker, switching to external linking test.pas(5,1) Fatal: There were 1 errors compiling module, stopping Fatal: Compilation aborted
Error: /usr/local/bin/ppc386 returned an error exitcode (normal if you did not specify a source file to be compiled)

If I use -vt I see

..
Searching file /usr/local/lib/fpc/2.6.0/I486-LINUX-LD... not found Searching file /usr/local/bin/i486-linux-ld... found Using util /usr/local/bin/i486-linux-ld
test.pas(5,1) Error: Can't call the linker, switching to external linking test.pas(5,1) Fatal: There were 1 errors compiling module, stopping Fatal: Compilation aborted
Error: /usr/local/bin/ppc386 returned an error exitcode (normal if you did not specify a source file to be compiled)

Nothing obviously useful in -vv output.

Also ppas.sh reads

#!/bin/sh
DoExitAsm ()
{ echo "An error occurred while assembling $1"; exit 1; } DoExitLink ()
{ echo "An error occurred while linking $1"; exit 1; } echo Linking test
OFS=$IFS
IFS="
"
/usr/local/bin/i486-linux-ld -b elf32-i386 -m elf_i386 -s -L. -o test link.res
if [ $? != 0 ]; then DoExitLink test; fi
IFS=$OFS

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:

1. IIRC FPC uses a builtin list of paths and -FD paths

2. The shell might use its own $PATH.

Solution, pass -FD or CROSSBINDIR (or something, search in makefile)

I'd not expect this to be a path problem since I've symlinked the assemblers into /usr/local/bin which is where ppc386 is, -vt output says that it's finding the binary and using an explicit -FD doesn't have an obvious effect.

I don't believe that this is a path problem since the assembler pass works, but I can make it fail by specifying the -a parameter:

$ fpc -XPi486-linux- -a test.pas
Free Pascal Compiler version 2.6.0 [2012/05/05] for i386 Copyright (c) 1993-2011 by Florian Klaempfl and others Note: Switching assembler to default source writing assembler Target OS: Linux for i386
Compiling test.pas
Assembling test
test.pas(4,26) Error: Can't call the assembler, error -9 switching to external assembling
test.pas(4,26) Error: Error while linking
test.pas(4,26) Fatal: There were 3 errors compiling module, stopping Fatal: Compilation aborted
Error: /usr/local/bin/ppc386 returned an error exitcode (normal if you did not specify a source file to be compiled)

So it appears to be something to do with how the compiler communicates with as or ld.

This was on an IA-64 system using its hardware emulation of x86. I think there's a potential that this could also occur on an x86-64 system, but I don't have one to test it on.