From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: PATCH [0/3]: Simplify the kernel build by removing perl. Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:39:27 -0800 Message-ID: <4960215F.8040804@zytor.com> References: <200901020207.30359.rob@landley.net> <495FEEAF.5020005@zytor.com> <200901032006.47652.rob@landley.net> <20090104023609.GA20929@shareable.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20090104023609.GA20929@shareable.org> Sender: linux-embedded-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Jamie Lokier Cc: Rob Landley , Leon Woestenberg , Embedded Linux mailing list , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Sam Ravnborg Jamie Lokier wrote: > > Related query: > > Does the Perl script being replaced use 64-bit arithmetic? Because > many Perl installations only do 32-bit arithmetic. > > If the Perl version works in 32-bit arithmetic, why does the shell > version not do the same thing? > The Perl version uses Math::BigInt, a Perl standard module (with a canned-values fallback for ancient or minimal Perl installations) to do arbitrary precision arithmetic. The original version also produced constants that could be used with 64-bit values, but since gcc doesn't support 128-bit arithmetic on 32-bit platforms (gcc *does* support 128-bit arithmetic on 64-bit platforms) we didn't end up using it and removed them, although the code to generate them can still be activated. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.