Minix3 and GCC

[Wilfred van Rooijen]

I often use the gfortran compiler (I do a lot of numerical work for my profession), and I was a bit surprised to see that GCC is not supported on Minix3.

I read on this forum that there is an issue with sysctl(8); apparently, the GCC configure system expects sysctl() to be present. Browsing on the net I found that sysctl() has to do with kernel settings - indeed, a piece of software which interacts directly with the kernel.

I would guess that one would not want to replicate sysctl on Minix, since sysctl interacts directly with the kernel, and the assumptions of sysctl() about the kernel may be incompatible with the structure of Minix.

On this forum, the other working solution was offered as "check where GCC uses sysctl and then somehow patch that part of the software" - indeed, a daunting task given the complexity of GCC.

I have been using Gentoo Linux for 15+ years so I am used to the notion that software is installed from source, and for this, GCC is indispensable. I would say that GCC would be a minimum requirement for Minix, but I guess Minix uses a different solution? I am interested in these aspects so please endulge me :-)