GDC ARM beta #1 (with binary releases!)

[Johannes Pfau]

I'm happy to announce the first GDC ARM beta on behalf of the GDC
team :)

ARM support is now at a point where the automated tests (test suite,
unit tests) pass and we're ready for feedback from real world usage.
All changes have been fully integrated into the standard GDC sources
which also means we're currently using the 2.064 frontend. ARM support
is currently limited to ARM/GNU Linux, i.e. GlibC. (This especially
means Android and bare metal programming are not officially supported).

Please report all bugs to
http://bugzilla.gdcproject.org/

If you're sure that the bug is a bug in phobos/druntime/DMD frontend
and not GDC specific please report it to
https://d.puremagic.com/issues

==== Getting the ARM beta ==== 

* All necessary code changes have been merged into Druntime, Phobos and
  GDC and you can simply get the latest GDC sources and build them on
  ARM. ( http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation/Generic )
* GDC is also part of the official Archlinux ARM repositories. To get
  GDC for Archlinux ARM, simply use these commands:
      pacman -S gdc libgphobos-devel
  You can also get dub on Archlinux ARM by executing
      pacman -S dub
  Many thanks to Dicebot for maintaining the Archlinux packages.
* We provide binary cross compilers for windows X86 (32/64bit) and Linux
  x86 (32/64bit). We also provide 'native' compilers which run directly
  on ARM machines.
  http://gdcproject.org/downloads/
  Note: Linux distribution packages or building from source should be
  preferred.


==== Precompiled GDC binaries ====

Precompiled toolchains are available for ARM hardfloat and ARM
softfloat systems. These toolchains target systems with relatively
recent glibc and linux kernel (GlibC >= 2.14, Linux >= 2.6.32).

To check if you need the hard- or softfloat version run gcc -v where
gcc is a working gcc for your ARM target. Then look for --with-float=
in the output: --with-float=soft <==> softfloat
--with-float=hard <==> hardfloat

--with-float=softfp:
We have no special binaries for these systems. Either compile GDC from
sources or use the softfloat binaries. The softfloat binaries should
work in 99% of all cases. The only known exception is using floating
point functions in fibers, a 'softfp' toolchain is required in this
case.


To compile for ARM simply use this gdc executable:
./arm-gdcproject-linux-gnueabi[hf]/bin/arm-gdcproject-linux-gnueabi[hf]-gdc

Note: The toolchain directories are write protected. If you want to
change this, use chmod +w -R arm-gdcproject-linux-gnueabi[hf].

For more information on how to use additional libraries with the cross
compilers, see 
http://crosstool-ng.org/hg/crosstool-ng/raw-file/e11a8a2e225d/docs/5%20-%20Using%20the%20toolchain.txt

==== Known issues ====

Known ARM-specific issues
* std.internal.math.gammafunction.d is not ported yet (Help here is
  very appreciated!)
* Array ops are evaluated in reverse order (WIP, FE 2.065)
  http://bugzilla.gdcproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8

Known issues with the binary builds
* If you extract 7z files and are asked if you want to overwrite files,
  answer yes (toolchains are built on case sensitive filesystems,
  extracting on case insensitive filesystems will cause this warning)
* Use the arm-...-gdc.exe executables and not bin/arm.../gdc.exe.
* Unfortunately there's no multilib support for now. We use
  crosstool-NG to build these toolchains and multilib support in
  crosstool-NG is broken. However, this might change in the next few
  months.