ppc buildserver problem

[Joost van der Sluis]

> the ppc buildsystem fails in compiling fpc. The pre-compiled binary
> gives a segfault. I asked someone on IRC to try to build the fpc-rpm on
> a old ppc, and there it works. (He used Debian Unstable, though)
> 
> Can someone give me some more information about what kind of powerpc the
> buildsystem has?

I asked it to the other fpc-developers, and one of them told me this:

>The reason is probably that the machine you are building on is a G5.
>For some reason, the Linux kernel people do not turn on a  
>compatibility bit in the G5 which guarantees the same behaviour for 
>the dcbz instruction as on other PPC's (it's meaning is "fill a cache  
>line with zeroes", but cache lines on G5's are 128 bytes as opposed  
>to 32 bytes on other ppc's and many programs, including the FPC rtl,  
>count on that -- which is the reason why this compatibility bit  
>exists and why the G5 also has a dcbzl instruction which zeroes out a  
>full 128 bytes in all cases).

Is it indeed a G5? Then this problem has to be solved upstream. In the
meantime I think fpc can't be available on powerpc.

How do I do that? Use the excludearc-option? I saw somewhere that I then
also need to make a bugzilla-item for it?

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,

  Joost van der Sluis
  CNOC Informatiesystemen en Netwerken
  http://www.cnoc.nl