Re: iceweasel-6.0.2
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 01:04:24PM -0400, Matt Turner wrote:
> I presume there are patches to make it all work? Posting those is a
> good place to start.
Need to get in touch with the package maintainer to determine how to
proceed. I fear the odds of a workable solution are slim. Among
other issues, the main impediment is Alpha no longer being a supported
architecture by the upstream code provider (Mozilla): one of the main
patches needed to get the Mozilla code to build on Alpha is essentially
a downgrade of two source files to versions existing in firefox prior to
version 3.5.5.
The Mozilla code "tortures" toolchains in ways that are hard to
reproduce using simple example code (as would be needed for useful bug
reports). We still have "-Wl,--no-relax" required as part of DSO_LDOPTS.
The optimizer on Alpha is broken, or at least behaves differently than
it evidently does on other 64-bit systems to which the Mozilla
maintainers have access: builds with "-O2" (default optimization)
typically segfault on invocation. Some success with "-O1" has been
reported by a Gentoo Alpha developer who dared to touch the Mozilla code
base, but it has been a long time since anything other than *no*
optimization has worked for me. Other "strangenesses" seem to come and
go depending on the g++ version used: these mostly have to do with
function prototyping and declarations as far as what I've personally
encountered.
Other things on the "to do" list would include implementing the js JIT
code on Alpha: that would have to be pushed upstream as well, because of
the "main impediment" mentioned earlier. It *used* to be the case you
could bypass the attempt to build the JIT code by specifying
"--disable-jit" as a configuration option: that's no longer honored, so
it's necessary to patch "js/src/Makefile.in" to eliminate
"-DENABLE_ASSEMBLER=1 -DENABLE_JIT=1" from CXXFLAGS as an Alpha-specific
thing. Still have to specify "--disable-ipc" as well, which isn't
necessary on supported architectures: that would need to be implemented
and pushed upstream as well.
Again, I need to get in touch with Mike Hommey et. al. before this thing
can go much farther. I've added Mike to the "Cc:" list.
Respectfully,
--Bob
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