RE: [PATCH 1/8] ld: Rename aarch64pe emulation target to arm64pe

[Tamar Christina <Tamar.Christina@arm.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Earnshaw <Richard.Earnshaw@foss.arm.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2023 2:09 PM
> To: Tamar Christina <Tamar.Christina@arm.com>; NightStrike
> <nightstrike@gmail.com>; Mark Harmstone <mark@harmstone.com>
> Cc: wej22007@outlook.com; zac.walker@linaro.org; binutils
> <binutils@sourceware.org>; nickc@redhat.com
> Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/8] ld: Rename aarch64pe emulation target to arm64pe
> 
> On 03/01/2023 12:09, Tamar Christina via Binutils wrote:
> > Unfortunately I don’t think it’s that simple..
> >
> > Sadly the name Arm64 is the one Microsoft has chosen to call their target
> ABI. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/overview  Further
> this is extended to Arm64EC etc https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
> us/cpp/build/arm64-windows-abi-conventions?view=msvc-170.
> >
> > So even though this is not the official naming that Arm uses, it’s
> > however the official one on Windows and so it’s reasonable that the PE
> target in LD follow this.
> >
> > So this is reasonable so long as the actual target itself stays aarch64-little.
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> > Tamar
> >
> > From: NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2023 12:00 PM
> > To: Mark Harmstone <mark@harmstone.com>
> > Cc: wej22007@outlook.com; zac.walker@linaro.org; Tamar Christina
> > <Tamar.Christina@arm.com>; binutils <binutils@sourceware.org>
> > Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/8] ld: Rename aarch64pe emulation target to
> > arm64pe
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 29, 2022, 21:41 Mark Harmstone
> <mark@harmstone.com<mailto:mark@harmstone.com>> wrote:
> > * The aarch64pe emulation target is renamed to arm64pe. This is the
> > name that LLVM is already using, even though as a rule we call this arch
> aarch64.
> > Without this clang won't work with ld. Another possibility would be to
> > change the -m parameter if it's "arm64", but that seems to me like
> > it's making things more complicated than they need to be.
> >
> > Or just fix clang. Seems like if clang wants to work with ld, clang should use
> ld's name.
> 
> The problem with arm64 is that it also matches existing configure scripts that
> use arm* for the 32-bit targets.  I don't think this is a good idea.  GNU tools
> have consistently used the official name for all targets.
> 

But the proposal here isn't to rename the target itself to arm64, only the emulation name.
I.e. only when you explicitly use -m, The target itself stays aarch64-* so this shouldn't break any
configure though. But it will at least be consistent with the existing platform tools, of which binutils
is the last to the party.

Regards,
Tamar

> R.
>