Triplet for ARM Linux HardFP ABI

[Andrew Stubbs]

Hi All,

Both Linaro and Debian are considering supporting the ARM hard-float 
variant of the EABI, at least as an unofficial port. This ABI is not 
compatible with the gnueabi currently in use for most ARM Linux distros, 
but has a number of performance advantages.

This means that we need to choose a name for it. Obviously, it's better 
if it's an "official" name, so I want to discuss it here. I'm aware that 
there is some bikeshedding to do here, but it's better it gets done 
before anybody gets stuck with something else. There are, of course, 
some real practical reasons why one name might be better than another.

So here are my suggestions:

   arm-linux-gnueabihf
    or maybe
   arm-linux-gnueabi-hf

     These will match any package that uses arm*-*-linux-gnueabi*.
     Choosing which variant is mainly a matter of taste.

   arm-linux-gnuhfeabi

     These will match any package that uses arm*-*-linux-*eabi (as I
     see gcc itself does).

I'm not sure which is better. I suspect that, either way, a lot of 
things will need to be fixed up.

An alternative would be to use the vendor field. That would be less 
difficult, but it feels like something of a hack to me.

FAOD, the new triplet would only set the default ABI variant. This can 
already be achieved via configure options, so this adds no real new 
functionality. This is just about agreeing how to label it.

Andrew Stubbs
CodeSourcery (currently working with Linaro)