Re: [4.8, PATCH 0/26] Backport Power8 and LE support

[Iain Sandoe <iain at codesourcery dot com>]

Hi Bill,

On 21 Mar 2014, at 02:05, Bill Schmidt wrote:

> For convenience of those who have kindly agreed to test the patch
> series, here is the entire series as a single compressed patch.  Note
> that this does not include patch 15/26, which we've agreed to submit
> separately.

To assess this on powerpc-apple-darwin9:

- applied this series as per the attached archive.
  (You might wish to double-check for white-space issues, git complained about a few of the patches).

- built & tested all langs including obj-c++ and Ada (but NOT Java), (G5, m32/m64).

I see no regressions related to this patch series*** 
... as far as I'm concerned, the series presents no apparent issue for PPC/Darwin.

cheers,
Iain

***
NOTE: JFTR, applying the series shows an apparent regression in g++/torture/pr45843.C @ -O3.
however analysis of the case shows that it's just exposing a pre-existing issue (apparently, we don't check well-enough for alignment constraints before choosing ld with a LO14 reloc).

> 
> Bill
> 
> On Wed, 2014-03-19 at 14:23 -0500, Bill Schmidt wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Support for Power8 features and the new powerpc64le-linux-gnu target,
>> including the ELFv2 ABI, has been developed up till now on the
>> ibm/gcc-4_8-branch.  It was appropriate to use this separate branch
>> while the support was unstable, but this branch will not represent a
>> particularly good support mechanism for distributions going forward.
>> Most distros are set up to pull from the major release branches, and
>> having a separate branch for one target is quite inconvenient.  Also,
>> the ibm/gcc-4_8-branch's original purpose is to serve as the code base
>> for IBM's Advance Toolchain 7.0.  Over time the two purposes that the
>> branch currently serves will diverge and make things even more
>> complicated.
>> 
>> The code is now tested and stable enough that we are ready to backport
>> this support to the FSF 4.8 branch.  This patch series constitutes that
>> backport.
>> 
>> Almost all of the changes are specific to PowerPC portions of the code,
>> and for those patches I am only CCing David.  However, some of the
>> patches require changes to common code, and for these I will CC Richard
>> and Jakub.  Three of these are slightly unrelated but necessary patches,
>> one to enable decimal float ABS builtins, and two others to fix PR54537
>> and PR56843.  In addition there are patches that update configuration
>> files throughout for the new target, and some small changes in common
>> call support (call.c, expr.h, function.c) to support how the new ABI
>> handles calls.
>> 
>> I realize it is unusual to backport such a large amount of code, but we
>> have been asked by distribution partners to do this, and we feel it
>> makes good sense for long-term support.
>> 
>> I have tested the patch series by applying it to a clean FSF 4.8 branch
>> and comparing the test results against those from the IBM 4.8 branch on
>> three systems:
>> * Power8, little endian (--mcpu=power8)
>> * Power8, big endian (--mcpu=power8)
>> * Power7, big endian (--mcpu=power7)
>> 
>> I also checked a recursive diff against the two source directories to
>> ensure that no patches were missed.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Bill
>> 
>> [ 1/26] diff-p8
>> [ 2/26] diff-p8-htm
>> [ 3/26] diff-le-config
>> [ 4/26] diff-le-libtool
>> [ 5/26] diff-le-tests
>> [ 6/26] diff-le-dfp
>> [ 7/26] diff-le-vector
>> [ 8/26] diff-abi-compat
>> [ 9/26] diff-abi-calls
>> [10/26] diff-abi-elfv2
>> [11/26] diff-abi-gotest
>> [12/26] diff-le-align
>> [13/26] diff-abi-libffi
>> [14/26] diff-dfp-abs
>> [15/26] diff-pr54537
>> [16/26] diff-pr56843
>> [17/26] diff-direct-move
>> [18/26] diff-le-config-2
>> [19/26] diff-quad-memory
>> [20/26] diff-lra
>> [21/26] diff-le-vector-api
>> [22/26] diff-mcall
>> [23/26] diff-pr60137-pr60203
>> [24/26] diff-reload
>> [25/26] diff-v1ti
>> [26/26] diff-trunk-missing
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> <4_8-backport-single.patch.bz2>