arm -msoft-float and -lfloat question

[Bryan Hundven <bryanhundven at gmail dot com>]

I noticed that arm oabi is still using -lfloat in LIBGCC_SPEC in
gcc/config/arm/linux-elf.h

Looking around for libfloat, I found:

http://netwinder.osuosl.org/users/s/scottb/public_html/notes/FP-Notes-6.html
http://netwinder.osuosl.org/users/s/scottb/

Which hasn't had a release since 1999, with a patch in 2000.

libgcc should provide these most of these soft float symbols.
Then I also notice the gcc/config/soft-fp is available, but only used
for armv6m.

If we don't get these symbols from gcc, then we get them from
(e)glibc's soft-fp?

This does not affect eabi, because the gcc/config/arm/linux-eabi.h
unsets LIBGCC_SPEC.


The reason I am bringing this up, is to validate a couple variants of
the same patch that has been floating around since about gcc 3.3:

http://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.43/patches/gcc-3.4.4/gcc-3.4.0-arm-nolibfloat.patch

and a newer version of this patch which adds more functions to
lib1asmfuncs (in libgcc?).

http://git.buildroot.net/buildroot/tree/toolchain/gcc/4.5.1/810-arm-softfloat-libgcc.patch

Any help in understanding why this is still here will be very helpful.

Thanks in advance,

-Bryan