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Re: Altivec Linux support in GCC
- From: David Edelsohn <dje at watson dot ibm dot com>
- To: Aldy Hernandez <aldyh at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Geoff Keating <geoffk at geoffk dot org>, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>, Michel LESPINASSE <walken at zoy dot org>, GCC Mailinglist <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 17:39:56 -0400
- Subject: Re: Altivec Linux support in GCC
>>>>> Aldy Hernandez writes:
>> -maltivec is the ISA selection flag. -mabi=xxx is the ABI selection
>> flag. There's an important distinction from the user's point of view
>> about which flags are ISA selection and which change the ABI, because
>> one set is safe and the other isn't.
Aldy> This set of defaults is not sane from a user's perspective, just
Aldy> judging from the amount of mail I get on this. As it stands I doubt
Aldy> more than 10% of users understand this.
>> short names like -maltivec or -mstring; I believe I made a proposal to
>> change that but never got time to implement it.
Aldy> Well I propose to have -maltivec imply -mabi=altivec; it doesn't matter
Aldy> if it historically it is an ISA selection flag. I propose it, am
Aldy> willing to code it, and dispel the average Joe's confusion. For that
Aldy> matter, the patch is included below. If you propose something else and
Aldy> not implement it, it really doesn't gain us anything.
This is inconsistent with all other -mXXX options in the PowerPC
port and will confuse users assuming the rest of the options behave this
way.
David