Mono on PowerPC64

[Curtis Hamilton]

All,

I've been successful in building Mono 5.x for powerpc64.

I currently have Mono 5.14.0.177 running. However, there are some 
remaining issues.

  - VisualC# (csc.exe) does not support big endian and probably never will.

  - Mono for powerpc64 SIGABRT when building or running F#.  On Powerpc, 
you can build F#,
by changing the value for Tailcall" in cpu-ppc.md from 120 to 124.

You can work around the VisualC# issue by substituting mcs.exe for 
csc.exe.  However,
there's not currently a fix or work around for F# on powerpc64.

I've also been able to build most other .NET tools and bindings.

I was able to build MonoDevelop 6.1.2 on both 32-bit and 64-bit powerpc, 
with
a little editing of the solution file "Main.sln", removing all 
references to FSharp.
This gives me a working development environment, minus the F# binding.  
There are issues
with compiling new versions of MonoDevelop which I will address in 
another forum.

Fixes for mono on powerpc/powerpc64 have already been submitted and 
committed to the mono
project source master on GITHUB. However, previously released versions 
require port patches
which I'll submitt via PR.

I can provide additional information if anyone is interested.

- Curtis

On 10/11/18 10:46, Justin Hibbits wrote:
> Hi Curtis,
>
> At the time I did the ppc32 port I did not have a ppc64 machine, then I
> lost interest.  It was mostly a checkbox for m, and every app I tried
> written in C# was very unstable, so I didn't pursue it any further than
> that.  As you saw, it bitrotted pretty quickly.
>
> What issues are you running into with 64-bit?
>
> - Justin
>
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 17:41:17 -0400
> Curtis Hamilton <clhamilto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Justin,
>>
>> I understand that you once worked on Mono for ppc/ppc64.  If so, were
>> you able to get it working on ppc64?
>>
>> With the recent changes in Mono 5.x, I got 32-bit Mono working. But
>> have run into a brick wall with 64-bit.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Curtis
>>
>>
>>
>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>> Subject: 	freebsd-mono Digest, Vol 366, Issue 3
>> Date: 	Wed, 10 Oct 2018 12:00:01 +0000
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>      1. Re: Mono on PowerPC64 (Mark Felder)
>>      2. [Bug 232060] lang/mono: Fix for Mono build on FreeBSD PowerPC
>>         (bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org)
>>      3. Re: Mono Build on PowerPC (Mark Felder)
>>      4. Re: Help Wanted - Work with MSFT and help finish the port of
>>         .NET Core to FreeBSD (Mark Felder)
>>      5. ?????? - ?? ?? ????????? ? ??????? ? ?? ????????
>>         (????????? ??????)
>>      6. [Bug 232060] lang/mono: Fix for Mono build on FreeBSD PowerPC
>>         (bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2018 11:56:24 -0500
>> From: Mark Felder <feld at FreeBSD.org>
>> To: freebsd-mono at freebsd.org
>> Subject: Re: Mono on PowerPC64
>> Message-ID:
>> 	<1539104184.1673855.1536151984.78F7EC7E at webmail.messagingengine.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 7, 2018, at 16:51, Curtis Hamilton wrote:
>>> I'm working to get the current Mono release to build on PowerPC64
>>> (64-bit).
>>>
>>> I wanted to check if anyone has experience with building Mono on
>>> non-X86 platforms.  I'm sure that no one has build Mono on
>>> FreeBSD/PowerPC because there is an error in
>>> "mono/utils/mono-sigcontext.h" that prevents Mono from building,
>>> 32-bit.  The code in question is:
>> Justin Hibbits did this work in the past, IIRC, but he hasn't worked
>> on PPC/PPC64 mono in several years.
>>
>>