------- Comment #2 from joseph at codesourcery dot com 2006-10-22 13:20 ------- Subject: Re: Enable IBM long double format in PowerPC Linux soft float
On Sat, 21 Oct 2006, pinskia at gcc dot gnu dot org wrote: > There was talking about this on the mailing list but I cannot find it right > now. This is glibc bug 2749: http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2749 which has all the necessary patches to both GCC and glibc. To all intents and purposes we have a regression for PowerPC GNU/Linux soft-float: current GCC+glibc are broken, pre-4.1 GCC and glibc 2.3 worked. In order to fix this regression, a fix to a soft-fp bug is needed. As per the FSF copyright policy, this must go in glibc first. http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2006-03/msg00558.html says: RMS says: > The GLIBC developers should accept some conditionals into their > source, so that we do not have two diverging versions. We should all > talk together to make this happen. He doesn't say that they should also accept bug fixes, but I think that can be taken for granted. Steven Munroe has submitted the relevant glibc fixes several times, both to libc-alpha (for core glibc) and libc-ports (for ports) and to that glibc bug report, but they have not been reviewed. I have stated on libc-alpha that I believe the patches are correct, but I only maintain soft-fp for GCC and cannot approve GCC-local changes that are not in glibc, and my own soft-fp patches for glibc are not reviewed either. At this point, I do not believe that the FSF copyright policy is workable in the soft-fp case and so ask that the SC revisit it with RMS and the glibc SC with a view to obtaining one of the following conclusions: * Local changes for soft-fp are permitted in GCC (subject to review by GCC soft-fp maintainers) until effective and prompt review and commit to glibc CVS of such changes is available when they are submitted to glibc. * In conjunction with the glibc maintainers, agreement is obtained that glibc maintainers will review and commit more promptly changes to soft-fp since it is imported into GCC and so they have responsibility in this regard to more than just its users within glibc. * glibc maintainers move soft-fp to the glibc ports repository, along with the Alpha, Sparc and PowerPC code that uses it, and allow other maintainers to maintain the code in the ports repository. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=29541