Baby's First AldyVec/AltiVec patch

[Ziemowit Laski]

On 19 Dec 2003, at 17.26, Zack Weinberg wrote:

>
> I don't know what "AldyVec" is.

Sorry :-) -- it refers to Aldy's implementation of AltiVec in FSF gcc 
3.3 and beyond.
>
> It was my understanding that the (vector TYPE) (1, 2, 3, 4) notation
> was deprecated in the official Apple/Motorola AltiVec specification,

This is certainly news to me. :-) The parenthesized notation is 
supported by all Apple gcc compilers, as well as MrC and CodeWarrior 
(and now, I believe, IBM's xlc).  It is also described in the Motorola 
spec, black-on-white.  I can't even fathom breaking our users in this 
way.

> and it was also my understanding that the GCC maintainers had agreed
> that this notation would never be supported by GCC.

I don't recall any maintainer ever delving into such minutiae -- is 
there a thread you could post a link to?

>   In fact, all of
> the features of your patch, I believe, were considered for inclusion
> in the past and firmly rejected.

There were objections to the the way the patch was engineered, most 
notably the modifications needed in the C and C++ yacc grammars (and 
the difficulty in making them target-dependent).  But I do not recall a 
principled rejection of allowing FSF gcc to support the Apple/Motorola 
AltiVec syntax.

--Zem