Re: [PATCH, RFC] Enable IBM long double for PPC32 Linux

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

David Edelsohn wrote:
>>>>>>Mark Mitchell writes:
> 
> 
> Mark> So, the unfortunate thing here is that we (the GCC maintainers and the
> Mark> GLIBC maintainers) failed to coordinate well; ideally, the GLIBC
> Mark> maintainers would have told us they wanted to have the 128-bit long
> Mark> double support in GCC 4.1 some while ago, so that we could have
> Mark> incoroprated that into the GCC release plans.  Or, perhaps this
> Mark> requirement just popped up today, and it just happens that we're
> Mark> unluckily late in the GCC release cycle.  Anyhow, it would certainly be
> Mark> good if in future we can try to avoid the schedule issue that we
> Mark> have now. 
> 
> 	From my vantage point, this has been a long-requested feature of
> the various GLIBC ports, but the window of opportunity to implement the
> change only appeared a little over a week ago.

I'm just surprised, in that I'd not heard anything about the issue until
you brought it to my attention.  It's possible I've just missed the
discussion, and I freely admit that I don't keep up with GLIBC
development.  However, it would have been good to have this project
listed as a 4.1 development project.  Since GCC could implement the
feature even without GLIBC support, it could have been mentioned as a
possible project.

> 	The patches mostly are confined to the various architecture ports.
> There have not been any reports of problems from either the affected
> targets or other targets in the same ports.  Jakub extensively tested PPC
> Linux last week and has been testing zSeries Linux this weekend.

Good.  When there's patch that y'all think is ready for 4.1, please
point me at it, and I will review.  I do not plan to try to review the
deeper technical issues, but I will take a look to try to reassure that
it's safe for people that don't use the flag.

> 	We do not live in an ideal world and need to try to accomodate
> dynamic schedules when possible.

Yes, I agree.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713