Re: [RFC PATCH] Optionally use -mlong-double-128 by default on {powerpc{,64},s390{,x},sparc,alpha}-linux

[Andrew Pinski <pinskia at physics dot uc dot edu>]

On Jan 27, 2006, at 11:58 AM, Jakub Jelinek wrote:

> Hi!
>
> This is a preliminary patch for -mlong-double-128 as default on the
> linux targets that are going to switch long double in glibc 2.4+.
> The gcc side is only done for ppc ATM and I'd say it is not very
> controversial, just adds a new configure option to select the default
> and has a reasonable default value (when building against glibc 2.4+
> uses TFmode long double, otherwise DFmode long double).

I am still wondering why this was not thought of earlier on in the
release cycle.  GCC 4.1 is already 9 days overdue and we are talking
about an ABI change.  Yes this is a good ABI change but we are talking
about an ABI change which happens a week before release.  In fact a lot
of -mlong-double-128 support for the targets are new and not as well  
tested
as they really could have been if this was changed in say stage 1 of  
4.1.

I would like people to reconsider this change for 4.1.  We really  
should have
a stage 3 as only bug fixes and no ABI changes and no new features.   
The last
new feature which was added to 4.1 (for a bug "fix"), broke a couple  
different
targets and only yesterday the fix was applied, more than 2 months  
later.  So
if this patch goes in 4.1, we might find a bug which causes another  
delay in
releasing 4.1 which seems like a wrong thing to do.

Thanks,
Andrew Pinski