Re: [PATCH] PowerPC: Add float128/Decimal conversions

[Michael Meissner <meissner@linux.ibm.com>]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 01:51:44PM -0600, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 07:05:24PM -0500, Michael Meissner wrote:
> > If the glibc is not 2.32 or later, this code just compiles to using abort.
> 
> That is the compile-time target glibc.  That is often *not* the glibc
> your program runs with, as I said before.  And this is a huge problem
> still.
> 
> > That way the user won't get unknown reference errors due to the calls to the
> > glibc 2.32 functions that aren't in previous glibcs.
> 
> See above.
> 
> Also, tight version dependencies like this are problematic: glibc has
> version dependencies on GCC already!
> 
> You should do the conversion *inside of libgcc*.  As said many times
> before.

Note, NONE of the other Decimal conversion functions are done within LIBGCC.
All use sprintf/scanf.  It is just that until GLIBC 2.32, we did not have the
necessary support in GLIBC.

I just don't think LIBGCC is the place to do this conversion, given the nature
of decimal arithmetic.

-- 
Michael Meissner, IBM
IBM, M/S 2506R, 550 King Street, Littleton, MA 01460-6245, USA
email: meissner@linux.ibm.com, phone: +1 (978) 899-4797