Re: long long / long long

[mike stump <mrs at windriver dot com>]

> From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
> Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 10:16:22 -0700
> To: jbuck@synopsys.COM, gcc@gcc.gnu.org
> Cc: 

> Well, the linux kernel people would also scream very loudly if the
> compiler started using floating point for integer divides (Linux
> uses -fno-fp-regs on architectures where it is needed/supported, but
> x86 doesn't even _have_ that flag right now).  In the kernel, we do
> NOT want to pollute the (big) FP state, as the kernel doesn't want
> to save/restore it all the time.

I'll echo this point as well.  In our OS, we use gcc, and we need the
ability to generate code that avoids the FP resources, as long as
there isn't any user code that appears to use those resources.

So, for example:

  long long a,b;

  main() { a = b; }

should not use FP resources, but:

  double a,b;

  main() { a = b; }

can.  Presently, our best use of gcc has us using -msoft-float for
this purpose, but, that's not quite what we want.

Would be nice if gcc had a target independent way of doing this.