After installing gcc-3.4.0 and configuring it to use clib2
(with a severely kludged specs file), I have now tried to
compile every source file in the tcsh source distribution
as a quick way to determine the feasibility of porting it.
I am happy to write that with a few exception it seems the
tcsh source is _relatively_ portable. The main areas which seem
to need a bit of work are the following:
* termios
* missing signals
* resource limits
* multi-user support
* fork()/vfork()
Of these, only the missing signals and fork()/vfork() appears to
pose any significant problem and as a positive side-effect, we might
contribute further to the development of clib2 (just an idea).
The ixemul-compiled tcsh binary is extremely unstable on my machine
and crashes randomly, usually in less than 15 seconds. It does, however,
appear to handle csh scripts - which the older csh implementation did
not (it only handled a subset).
Unfortunately, this still does not indicate if it would be easier to
write our own intepreter or not.
-Peter aka. Archprogrammer, still investigating.
PS: If this is uninteresting, just tell me and I will stop
posting status updates here.
Reality is for people who cannot face ScienceFiction.
Only lefthanded people are in their right minds.