From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by oss.sgi.com (8.11.2/8.11.3) id g1QDRkI15097 for linux-mips-outgoing; Tue, 26 Feb 2002 05:27:46 -0800 Received: from dea.linux-mips.net (a1as04-p167.stg.tli.de [195.252.186.167]) by oss.sgi.com (8.11.2/8.11.3) with SMTP id g1QDRe915093 for ; Tue, 26 Feb 2002 05:27:40 -0800 Received: (from ralf@localhost) by dea.linux-mips.net (8.11.6/8.11.1) id g1QCRCG18470; Tue, 26 Feb 2002 13:27:12 +0100 Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 13:27:12 +0100 From: Ralf Baechle To: Dominic Sweetman Cc: Jay Carlson , mad-dev@lists.mars.org, Carlo Agostini , linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Subject: Re: Problems compiling . soft-float Message-ID: <20020226132711.A18296@dea.linux-mips.net> References: <20020225132559.A3500@dea.linux-mips.net> <20020226060236.A5293@dea.linux-mips.net> <15483.27029.29266.976139@gladsmuir.algor.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <15483.27029.29266.976139@gladsmuir.algor.co.uk>; from dom@algor.co.uk on Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 10:55:17AM +0000 X-Accept-Language: de,en,fr Sender: owner-linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Precedence: bulk On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 10:55:17AM +0000, Dominic Sweetman wrote: > Incremental changes to the ABI are pretty bad news. Isn't it > avoidable in this case? > > It seems to me that soft-float programs are either carefully > controlled test cases, or used as part of a 100% soft-float system. > > In the first case the programmer had better take care, and in the > second the kernel should have been changed to kill any program with an > FP op-code. Experience shows that people will use every opportunity to shot themselfes into their foot ... Even a soft-fp system may still have the in-kernel emulator, so be able to execute both soft-fp and hard-fp binaries correctly. But it won't be able to support a mix of both nor would the kernel know that an application is just mixing hard and soft fp. Ralf