Building GCC 1.27

9 hours ago

GCC 1.27, released in 1988, was the first version to support the x86 CPU, and the author built it on a modern 64-bit Ubuntu system.
The build process was based on Mikhail Maltsev's work but required updates for 64-bit OS, system headers, and enabling the DBX debug format.
Modern assembler, linker, and debugger handle GCC 1.27's output without issues, and many modern command options like -O, -g, -W work as expected.
Build steps include installing gcc-multilib, downloading the source and patch, configuring via symlinks, and performing a three-stage bootstrap (make, stage1, stage2) followed by installation.
The author used GCC 1.27 to build DOOM, noting the lack of a long long type and considering a conversion to 32-bit instructions in long mode for 64-bit compatibility.

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