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Re: Baby's First AldyVec/AltiVec patch


On 19 Dec 2003, at 17.26, Zack Weinberg wrote:


I don't know what "AldyVec" is.

Sorry :-) -- it refers to Aldy's implementation of AltiVec in FSF gcc 3.3 and beyond. 

It was my understanding that the (vector TYPE) (1, 2, 3, 4) notation
was deprecated in the official Apple/Motorola AltiVec specification,

This is certainly news to me. :-) The parenthesized notation is supported by all Apple gcc compilers, as well as MrC and CodeWarrior (and now, I believe, IBM's xlc). It is also described in the Motorola spec, black-on-white. I can't even fathom breaking our users in this way.

and it was also my understanding that the GCC maintainers had agreed
that this notation would never be supported by GCC.

I don't recall any maintainer ever delving into such minutiae -- is there a thread you could post a link to?

  In fact, all of
the features of your patch, I believe, were considered for inclusion
in the past and firmly rejected.

There were objections to the the way the patch was engineered, most notably the modifications needed in the C and C++ yacc grammars (and the difficulty in making them target-dependent). But I do not recall a principled rejection of allowing FSF gcc to support the Apple/Motorola AltiVec syntax.

--Zem

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