RE: [patch] Fixed-point patch 9/10

["Fu, Chao-Ying" <fu@mips.com>]

Mark Mitchell wrote:
> >   Is there any status update for this patch (9/10)?
> > http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2007-08/msg00099.html
> 
> Wow, that's a lot of routines. :-)  I'm going to trust you that the
> implementations of the various routines are OK.  How many of those
> routines are actually necessary on a MIPS processor that supports
> fixed-point?  Do almost all of them get eliminated from libgcc?

  MIPS processors can support most of add, sub, mul patterns with or without
saturating.  For division, shift, compare, negation, and conversions among 
fixed-point, integer, and floating-point types, libgcc routines are needed.
Conversion routines are the biggest portion in libgcc, because
we convert between so many different machine modes to cover
all cases.

> 
> I'm a little worried about how much bigger this will make 
> libgcc, but if
> it only affects targets configured with fixed-point 
> emulation, then I'm
> not so worried.  (I suspect that most people will either used a
> fixed-point processor, or will not even turn on the emulation.)
> 
> >   One issue that we want to mention is that
> > building this fixed-point libgcc library requires GNU make 3.81,
> > due to code in Makefile.in:
> 
> Thank you for pointing this out.  The make code you've written looks
> very tidy.  However, I don't think we can require GNU make 
> 3.81 at this
> point.  I think it would be reasonable to require that for 
> GCC 4.4, but
> I think it's a bit late in the game to require that for 4.3.  In any
> case, it's not a decision I can make unilaterally.  Is it 
> possible to do
> what you need to do with an older version of GNU make?  (I can't
> remember what the oldest supported version of GNU make is for GCC.)
> 

  I will check with Nigel to see if we can change Makefile.in for 
GNU Make 3.79.1.  Thanks a lot!

Regards,
Chao-ying