Re: Revised release criteria for GCC 4.0

["E. Weddington" <ericw at evcohs dot com>]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> "E. Weddington" <ericw@evcohs.com> writes:
>
>  
>
> > 1. Under simtest-howto.html, it mentions that newlib is required for
> > testing, and you mention a newlib port. Why is newlib required? The
> > avr port is a slightly different beast in that, for the vast majority
> > of users (see more below), it does not use newlib as its C library, it
> > uses avr-libc: <http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/avr-libc/>, and
> > has done so for a few years. The only recent exception to this is the
> > RTEMS folks who are more interested in a newlib port. I don't know
> > offhand how mature the newlib avr port is.
> >    
>
> The goal is to make it easy for gcc developers to run the testsuite.
> Many gcc developers already know how to work with newlib.  In
> particular, it is already in the uberbaum repository on
> sourceware.org, along with gcc and the binutils.  So somebody can
> simply check out the uberbaum repository and build and test
> everything.  Requiring gcc developers to obtain yet another tool in
> order to do testing makes it that much less likely that anybody will
> actually test.
>
>  
Ok, sure. But realistically, it's going to be the AVR port developers 
who will be running the testsuite, and they're already familiar with 
avr-libc (I'm excluding the RTEMS folks for this argument). And since 
the AVR hasn't even made the "secondary" platform status :-), it looks 
like it will continue to be this way for a while.

So, from what I gather with that statment, is that using newlib is just 
a convenience; there's nothing inherent in it that is required for 
testing with a simulator?

> The best type of simulator lives in the sim directory in the src
> repository on sourceware.org.  This is part of the gdb distribution.
> This type of simulator can be run standalone or as part of gdb.  I
> don't know what documentation there is on these types of simulators.
>
>  
Yes, I've seen those too.
Hmm, that's what I was hoping to find out, documentation for those types 
of simulators. I've seen SID <http://sources.redhat.com/sid/> and GGEN 
<http://sources.redhat.com/cgen/>, but does anybody know what is 
currently being used to develop those simulators in the sim directory?, 
what should be used?

Thanks
Eric