if we are going to support universal arm/x86_64 ports, we'll likely need a multi-architecture gcc again

[Ken Cunningham]

I’m not sure if the MacPorts plan is to support universal arm/x86_64 builds, but I can imagine that for some years we might want to consider doing that.

The last gcc version we had that supported multiarchitecture building was apple-gcc42 (Intel, PPC).

We might have built a suitable newer cross-compiling gcc by updating the current gcc darwindriver.c with Apple’s lipo enhancements and doing a formal cross-compiling installation, but we never got around to it, and our current gcc versions are single arch (although support 32 and 64bit in each). There are some projects on github that did this (Frederick Devernay’s, among others).

But with arm now on the horizon, we will need a cross-compiling gcc again if we are to have cross-arch universal support, which I can certainly see a need for. (A gcc that supports darwin arm has not yet been released, but it is currently working and exists).

This is (IMHO) a major MacPorts advantage, as our universal support is unusually robust.

Ken