File:  [gforth] / gforth / INSTALL
Revision 1.16: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Mon Dec 11 13:15:18 1995 UTC (28 years, 3 months ago) by pazsan
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD
Added INSTALL.DOS
make DOS compile fool-proof (almost ;-)
Use autoconf macro to select GCC and abort if not available.

You need gcc version 2.0 or later to compile gforth.

First, type

./configure

or

CC=<whatever you call your gcc> ./configure

if your local gcc installation uses a different name (e.g. gcc-2.7.2),
or you want to generate for a different binary format (e.g.  "gcc -b
i486-linuxaout -V 2.7.0" to generate an a.out executable under Linux
which you may give your friends who don't have ELF libraries).

configure has the following useful parameters:
  --prefix=PREFIX         install architecture-independent files in PREFIX
                          [default: /usr/local]
  --exec-prefix=PREFIX    install architecture-dependent files in PREFIX
                          [default: same as prefix]
  --enable-force-reg      Use explicit register declarations if they appear in
                          the machine.h file. This can cause a good speedup,
                          but also incorrect code with some gcc versions on
                          some processors (default disabled).
  --enable-direct-threaded      Force direct threading. This may not work on
                                some machines and may cause slowdown on others.
                                (default processor-dependent)
  --enable-indirect-threaded    Force indirect threading. This can cause a
                                slowdown on some machines.
                                (default processor-dependent)
  --with-debug     specifies option -g to compile with debug info (default)
   --without-debug  omits the -g switch and creates smaller images on
                    machines where strip has problems with gcc style
                    debugging informations.
  --help: tells you about other parameters.

If you don't like the defaults for the installation directories, you
should override them already during configure.  E.g., if you want to
install in the /gnu hierarchy instead of in the default /usr/local
hierarchy, say

./configure --prefix=/gnu

After, configuration, type

make

If your make has trouble with the Makefile, "make gforth" might work.

If your installed gcc isn't called "gcc" (e.g., called "gcc-2.7.2"), type

make GCC=<whatever you call your gcc>

instead. The more appropriate place to select your compiler is when
running configure.

Now you can check whether your shiny new Forth system works. Say

make test

You can run some benchmarks with

make bench

and compare them with the results in Benchres and in the manual.

If everything is allright, you may want to install gforth. Type

make install

You have to make an entry in the info directory file manually.

For paper documentation, print gforth.ps (a Postscript file (300dpi
fonts, i.e., it works, but does not produce best quality on better
printers)), or say

make gforth.dvi

and print the resulting file gforth.dvi. You can also get the
documentation in HTML format by typing

make html

		Multiple Versions and Deinstallation

Several versions of Gforth can be installed and used at the same
time. Version `foo' can be invoked with `gforth-foo'. We recommend to
keep the old version for some time after a new one has been installed.

You can deinstall this version of Gforth with 'make uninstall' and
version foo with 'make uninstall VERSION=foo'. 'make uninstall' also
tells you how to uninstall Gforth completely.

			A Possible Problem

You need to read this only if you see a message like

"gforth: Cannot load nonrelocatable image (compiled for address 0x1234) at address 0x5678
The Gforth installer should look into the INSTALL file"

Gforth supports both relocatable and fixed-address images. If you load
normal Forth code and save the image, you get a fixed-address
image. Producing a relocatable image is more difficult.

Therefore, Gforth has only a relocatable image of the kernel
(kernal.fi), which is powerful enough to load the rest of
Gforth. However, loading the rest takes a noticable amount of time. To
avoid this delay (which would occur on every startup), the
installation procedure produces an image fixed at an address
determined at the Gforth run that produced the image. This
fixed-address image is loaded by default. On most OSs this works,
because the first chunk of memory is always allocated at the same
address. If the address changes, you get the message above.

An image address change can be caused by a change of the gforth
executable, or by a change (upgrade) of the OS; in these cases you
just have to rebuild and reinstall the fixed address image with

rm gforth.fi; make gforth.fi; make install

If you get such a message with a different address in place of the
0x5678 each time you try to start gforth, you cannot use fixed-address
images on your OS. In this case, send us a message so that we start
searching for a comfortable solution to this problem. In the
meantime, start gforth with

gforth -i kernal.fi startup.fs


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