From: kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl
Subject: Re: Running Gnu C from a floppy
To: A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs1 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 13:19:50 +0100 (MET)
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu (DJGPP users list)

> 
>   Sometimes people have to work on public computers. In that case, if Gnu C is
> not on that PC, he will have to run it from a floppy. In theory I could make
> up a Gnu C booting floppy, with:-
>   (0) The two hidden system files.
>   (1) The special \AUTOEXEC.BAT needed; its path would have to include C:\DOS
> etc.
>   (2) The special \CONFIG.SYS needed.
>   (3) Code to create Gnu C's work directory if it is not there already.
>   (4) As much of Gnu C as can fit on the floppy.
> 
>   Re (4), could Gnu C run on a subset of its files small enough to fit onto a
> floppy? 

Depends on the type of floppy you have ;-)
Most people use floppies which are limited to 1.4 Mb.
This size makes it (almost) impossible to fit all the GCC stuff. See below.

> If so, it would be useful as guidance for people that want to run the
> Gnu C/C++ compiler off a floppy if one of the Gnu C DOCS files could include a
> list of (a) the irreducible minimum of files to run the compiler, and (b) what
> library files are invoked by which of the #include files.
> 

'gcc -v hello.c -o hello' produces:

Reading specs from c:/gcc/lib/specs
gcc version 2.4.1
 c:/gcc/bin/cpp.exe -lang-c -v -undef -D__GNUC__=2 -Dunix -Di386 -D__unix__ -D__i386__ -D__unix -D__i386 -D__GO32__ -D__MSDOS__ -DGO32 -DMSDOS -noprecomp hello.c C:\TMP/cc011910
GNU CPP version 2.4.1 (80386, BSD syntax)
 c:/gcc/bin/cc1.exe C:\TMP/cc011910 -quiet -dumpbase hello.c -version -o C:\TMP/cca11910
GNU C version 2.4.1 (80386, BSD syntax) compiled by GNU C version 2.4.1.
 c:/gcc/bin/as.exe -o C:\TMP/ccb11910 C:\TMP/cca11910
 c:/gcc/bin/ld.exe -o hello c:/gcc/lib/crt0.o -Lc:/gcc/lib -Lc:/gcc/contrib/dvx/lib C:\TMP/ccb11910 -lgcc -lc -lgcc


'dir c:\djgpp\bin' produces:

GO32     EXE     56332 31-05-93   22.30
CPP      EXE     84484 30-05-93   10:09
CC1      EXE    870916 30-05-93   10:09
AS       EXE    113152 31-05-93   13:19
LD       EXE    137728 31-05-93   10:27

      5  file(s)    1262612 bytes

'dir c:\djgpp\include' and 'dir c:\gcc\include\sys' give another >200 kb.
'dir c:\djgpp\lib' add another couple of 100 kbytes files.

It could be possible in principle if you have a very high density floppy drive!


 .^^^^^^^^           _____________________________________
 |      |          / Pieter Kunst (P.J.)                   \
 |  _  _|        /   Philips Research Laboratories,          \
.--(o)(o)      /     Building WY3, Prof. Holstlaan 4,         \
|@      _)   /       5656 AA  Eindhoven, The Netherlands.      |
  | ,___|   /        e-mail: kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl             /
  |   /     \_______________________________________________/
  /____\