Re: [m68k] asm regression with 3.3/3.4/3.5

[Gunther Nikl <gni at gecko dot de>]

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 12:53:40PM +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gunther Nikl [mailto:gni@gecko.de] 
> > Sent: 13 May 2004 12:36
> 
> > On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 05:04:08PM +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: gcc-owner On Behalf Of Gunther Nikl
> > > > Sent: 12 May 2004 16:44
> > > 
> > > > with m68k-amigaos A6 is a free register and A5 is the 
> > framepointer)
> > > 
> > >   'Free' ?  I'd have said it was fairly seriously reserved 
> > for the OS
> > > myself!
> > 
> >   In GCC context A6 is a general free register since with m68k-amigaos
> >   A5 is the framepointer. Most (all?) other m68k targets use A6 as
> >   framepointer. For GCC it's not important to know that A6 is used for
> >   system calls.
> 
>   Yeh, you're right, there's no need to place it on the list of fixed
> registers just because it's clobbered by syscalls.

  Only _scratch_ registers are clobbered.

>   Actually, although it's a requirement that you have the lib base pointer
> in a6 when you make a syscall, is it also guaranteed that the libcall will
> return it unmangled?

  Yes, since A6 is a non-scratch register.

>   In any case, I think the real issue here is that gcc isn't obliged to keep
> all those values that you've assigned to hard asm registers live during the
> asm block.  It's allowed to spill and reload them if it thinks it wants to.

  The documentation doesn't say anything about this. I have an explicit
  register variable as _input_ of my asm(). Thus I think I can assume
  that exactly this register is used.
  Then it looks like there is some code out there, that exactly has this
  expectation and its not m68k-only.

  Gunther