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Creating a patch for GNU GCC using Git

Overview and Target Audience The GNU GCC project followed a blend of a traditional method with contemporary git tools when it comes to contributing code, making the experience unique from some other, git-based projects. This blog post will explore different aspects of the process, helpful commands, and various scripts that would make the experience more pleasent for new contributors. While this blog aims to help new contributors get acustomed to the GNU GCC code culture and make contributing easier, it must be stressed that this is not in any way in-depth exploration of the process. This should help you put your first foot forward; the community will help you take the rest of the steps from that point on. This post also assumes the user is in a POSIX environment (e.g. Linux, FreeBSD). Git and GNU As stated in this phoronix post , GNU GCC made a full transition to git early 2020. As of this writing, the community seems to be adjusting to the new tools. GNU GCC hosts its own git serve
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Debugging with GCC: GIMPLE

GCC and GIMPLE One of the very first thing GCC asks the GSoC applicants to do, even before writing the application, is to try various different debugging techniques using GCC. I was personally familiar with the basic, compile-with-g-flag-and-use-gdb method. Turns out, there's more: GIMPLE. A Simple but Non-trivial Program Problem Description The instruction asks to compile a simple but non-trivial program with some flags that generates debugging information: -O3 -S -fdump-tree-all -fdump-ipa-all -fdump-rtl-all . Because I was keep reading on ways to debug GCC just prior to the statement, I immediately thought "GCC" and tried make -j8 CXXFLAGS="-O3 -S -fdump-tree-all -fdump-ipa-all -fdump-rtl-all" . This was a mistake: turns out, GCC can't be compiled with those flags. Thankfully, GCC developers have a very active IRC channel for me to signal SOS. Resolution jakub and segher were quick to respond to my call for help. jakub: it isn't meant that y
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Setting up IRC

About IRC Internet Relay Chat was once the most popular real-time communication method that uses computer for a large spectrum of community groups. While it has largely been supplanted by more contemporarly methods for most people, IRC is still a prefered means of communication among older software projects like GCC. The Client As an old technology that is also very favored among programmers, IRC has many clients with different flavors, from GUI to CLI to headless. As a linux user with strong attraction to tmux, I chose weechat. Depending on your distro or OS, install your client first. Configuring Weechat I will be using GCC channel in OFTC server as the example. How are we configuring this? While Weechat has a configuration file, Weechat officially advises against using the file to configure the program behavior. Instead, it promotes `/set` dialog within the client to set the proper configuration. Connect to server Let's first connect to server. The `#gcc` channel is host
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Act 3 Scene 1

Wait, what? The last post ended with completing Act1 Scene1, with hints to Act1 Scene2. Yeah, a lot happened since. Goblin Camp Some of the last work in the blog was about the Goblin Camp, a revival project of an abandoned source code, which in turn was inspired by a great game, Dwarf Fortress. Since then, I learned more about data structures, and object design patterns. With each enlightenment in programming, I was more and more aware why this code was abandoned multiple times by different groups. I became one of them. This doesn't mean my goal of marrying parallel programming with the great game concept is abandoned: ever since the last communication, I also took a course on GPU programming, and it is giving me new ideas and goals. It just would not be happening with the existing Goblin Camp. More on this in the future. And this concluded my Act 1. How about Act2 My Act 2 began with my Coop placement at Fundserv. It was truly a learning experience, in the best sense of the wor
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Act 1 Scene 1 Exeunt

Act 1 Scene 1 This year, I was able to dabble in open-source for the first time. It was a dream-come-true: a dream I long thought impossible to attain for my lack of understanding in programming language. How far have I changed since: not only is some of my code part of a program used by others, I am also hosting and developing a program as a part of the open-source community. Small, but a community. This all started thanks to DPS909 class . Act 1 Scene 2 The Act is still on. I am just getting warmed up. What will scene 2 have for me in store? Only time will tell. For now, I am going to enjoy cultivating a community while also belonging to many others, finding my way through, contributing as I am able. Perhaps that will be my scene 2. It will be beautifully ugly, and I will love every moment of it. To my audience, even if imaginary If you are reading this and thinking there is nothing you can do to make a meaningful contribution to a program that you love, I am glad to sa
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Project: Boost-free Goblins, part 3

Ready, Aim, and Fire After the battle-cry , and then calming down to make some preparation , I decided to take the shot. The target: boost::shared_ptr. To Action A quick search turns up that shared_ptr is supported in the STL's memory library since c++11. Well, that seems like an easy task. Let's take our script for a spin. tools/boostrm.sh shared_ptr memory Now I have a bunch of std::shared_ptr replacing the boost variant. Seems like everything is in good order. After pushing it into the github to have Travis CI do the honors of compiling it, turns out, some boost::weak_ptr, apparently derived from boost::shared_ptr, was being casted into boost::shared_ptr, and they are not compatible with std::shared_ptr since that's not what they inherited. Well, after a bit of research, it seems the weak_ptr has a STL version. It seems like weak_ptr needs to go, too. tools/boostrm.sh weak_ptr memory After another push into github, and another build run by Travis CI, it tu
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Project: Boost-free Goblins, Part 2

Last time at the goblin_camp The mad developers went on a warpath to rinse away Boost from the goblins. Loud yelling and crying was involved, 52 of them. But now that all the yelling is out of the way, how should we do this? Repetition, repetition, ... I am personally a very lazy programmer. If I can make computer do the job for me, I would have the computer do the job for me. While hunting down every instance of a library manually is doable in small number, as it was for cstdint, Other Boost libraries are more widely used and require much more effort scanning the text. Text. Text. Well, if we are talking about text-manipulation in sh ... Scripting my problem away My beloved hobby tools If it is not apparently already, I love automating tasks, and UNIX shell scripting had been my go-to solution for any binary scripting needs, especially in the days before I learned to program. This problem can be solved quite easily using few lines of scripts. Caveat We will be making a s
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