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Re: Instruction bundling on IA64 and the Intel Assembler
On Dec 15, 2003, at 16:39, Zack Weinberg wrote:
Geert Bosch <bosch@gnat.com> writes:
For the IA64 port to OpenVMS, we'll be using the Intel Assembler
(IAS).
Can you say why?
OpenVMS does not use exactly the same object formats as
other IA64 platforms, and there would be a non-trivial amount
of work to port the GNU assembler. Also, we could encounter
the same issue there: the GNU assembler outputs objects that
can be linked fine by the GNU linker, but not with the OpenVMS
system linker. The we'd go off and port the GNU linker in order
to finally get a working executable. Then, the debugger would
rely on some specific non-standard VMS-bits and we'd have to
port the GNU debugger.
Given the non-UNIXness of VMS, I think it is best to stick
to the first well-specified interface and fix the compiler
to output assembly language that can be understood by the
system assembler. This may also have some benefit for other
IA64 targets, such as GNU/Linux, for which there is also an
IAS port.
-Geert