Re: [RFC PATCH] Optionally use -mlong-double-128 by default on {powerpc{,64},s390{,x},sparc,alpha}-linux

[Andrew Pinski <pinskia at physics dot uc dot edu>]

On Jan 27, 2006, at 12:21 PM, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> All these changes rely on the C library support, and the support
> for backwards compatible way to switch long double has been added to
> glibc only a few weeks ago (and on the other side, glibc on several
> platforms relies on the GCC side to even build, things have to be
> done together).  If the changes aren't done in GCC 4.1 (here I'm  
> talking
> mainly about the -mlong-double-128 support, not about the switch to it
> by default), then there won't be any released compiler that will be  
> able to
> compile glibc 2.4 on ppc32, s390, s390x, alpha nor sparc.
> glibc decided to do the long double switchover about a month ago
> and glibc 2.4 release is planned within next month or so.

So ...  Yes GCC is the GNU compiler.  But it seems like glibc did not  
take
into account GCC release cycle when they made decision, GCC was  
already in
stage 3 at the time if glibc only decided a month ago.  As I mentioned
GCC 4.1 is already 9 days late from when Mark wanted to release a  
prerelease.

Maybe glibc has a much shorter release cycle than GCC does but not  
taking
into account another project's release cycle is a disaster waiting to  
happen.
Yes glibc already made the decision to make 128bit long double as  
default but
I feel this very late into the release cycle of GCC 4.1 is just too  
bad for them.
We are trying to provide a compiler which is high quality, the way we  
do this is
to have defined stages of the developing so that we don't end up like  
were we
would be releasing one or two days after this patch goes in without  
that much
testing.  (This goes for all patches which are considered not low  
risk, I am not
trying to pick at just this patch or just this one issue.)  I am  
trying to say
we really need to rethink this and maybe convince glibc to rethink  
their decision,
this time taking into GCC release cycle.  I really want GCC 4.1 to be  
released now
and having this or any other patches which don't fix a bug is really  
disturbing to
me to allow a couple of weeks before release.

Thanks,
Andrew Pinski