From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from oss.sgi.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by oss.sgi.com (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g56FBNnC025709 for ; Thu, 6 Jun 2002 08:11:23 -0700 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by oss.sgi.com (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id g56FBNjs025708 for linux-mips-outgoing; Thu, 6 Jun 2002 08:11:23 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: oss.sgi.com: majordomo set sender to owner-linux-mips@oss.sgi.com using -f Received: from mms1.broadcom.com (mms1.broadcom.com [63.70.210.58]) by oss.sgi.com (8.12.3/8.12.3) with SMTP id g56FBHnC025704 for ; Thu, 6 Jun 2002 08:11:17 -0700 Received: from 63.70.210.1 by mms1.broadcom.com with ESMTP (Broadcom MMS-1 SMTP Relay (MMS v4.7)); Thu, 06 Jun 2002 08:12:48 -0700 X-Server-Uuid: 1e1caf3a-b686-11d4-a6a3-00508bfc9ae5 Received: from mail-sj1-2.sj.broadcom.com (mail-sj1-2 [10.16.128.232]) by mail-sj1-5.sj.broadcom.com (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g56FDE1S027666; Thu, 6 Jun 2002 08:13:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cgd@localhost) by mail-sj1-2.sj.broadcom.com ( 8.9.1/SJ8.9.1) id IAA10448; Thu, 6 Jun 2002 08:13:14 -0700 (PDT) To: "Dominic Sweetman" cc: "Eric Christopher" , "Johannes Stezenbach" , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, linux-mips@oss.sgi.com, sde@algor.co.uk Subject: Re: [Fwd: Current state of MIPS16 support?] References: <3CBFEAA9.9070707@algor.co.uk> <15566.28397.770794.272735@gladsmuir.algor.co.uk> <1022870431.3668.19.camel@ghostwheel.cygnus.com> <15614.12481.424601.806779@gladsmuir.algor.co.uk> <200206060914.KAA03263@mudchute.algor.co.uk> From: cgd@broadcom.com Date: 06 Jun 2002 08:13:14 -0700 In-Reply-To: "Dominic Sweetman"'s message of "Thu, 6 Jun 2002 10:14:33 +0100 (BST)" Message-ID: X-Mailer: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-WSS-ID: 10E1A47A1116645-01-01 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Precedence: bulk At Thu, 6 Jun 2002 10:14:33 +0100 (BST), Dominic Sweetman wrote: > Difference in perception here. Noted. > Up to and including the 2.96+ release we currently work with, no GCC > version we've taken on has been fit for use by our MIPS customers > without a large number of fixes, including significant changes to > nominally non-machine-dependent code. > > If you experienced a big improvement in quality on moving to some more > recent version, I'd love to know and that's worth telling everyone. > > But if you're saying "it's always been more or less all right" then we > are bound to suspect you're not looking hard enough... "I don't know." I didn't really spend a _lot_ of time staring at the gnu toolchain until about 2 or 3 years ago (mips tools, 2 or so years 8-). Before that, i relied on tools that others had massaged ... and invariably, yes, they did have at least a few "important" bug fixes (often pulled in from later development versions of the tools). I think even going back 2 and change years, we had some problems with the versions of gcc at that time, and, for some sets of compile flags (for us, -membedded-pic) a _lot_ of problems with binutils. As of gcc 3.0.4 and w/ binutils 2.12.1 (with patches to each, but generally not bug-fixes .... though we undoubtedly still have a few), at least for us, they seem to work well for linux and for some amount of stand-alone embedded development work. I wouldn't disagree, BTW, that the current tools for mips seem to have some shortcomings. I also wouldn't claim that we've comprehensively tested the tools. 8-) I think the goal of improving test suites to show additional bugs is a very good one. Personally, I've been trying to make sure regression tests get added for bugs we find & fix, but there will always be more bugs to find. chris