On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Michael Meissner <meiss...@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote: > On powerpc64-linux systems that run on IBM servers, the 32-bit software > emulation library is not built with the Red Hat and SUSE distributions, but > the > FSF sources still list it as a multilib. This patch adds a configuration > option (--disable-ppc64-swfloat) to disable building this library. > > We've also seen some performance issues where building the multilibs with the > -mstrict-align option causes slow downs. I vaguelly recall adding this option > in the 1995 time frame, because the 603, 604 systems of the day did not handle > unaligned accesses in little endian mode, and maybe some of the other embedded > chips did not handle unaligned accesses at all. This patch also adds an > option > (--disable-ppc64-strict-align) to disable building the multilibs with > -mstrict-align.
I thought the use of -mstrict-align for multilibs was because of some re-use by embedded distros. That somehow one could build apps for embedded PowerPC processors without a full embedded cross-toolchain -- just using the regular toolchain with an embedded target command line option and the base libraries already worked. I am not suggesting that (ab)use is appropriate, but I don't want to break embedded environments. I agree that strict-align does not make sense for PPC64. I believe that is what you are accomplishing with the second version of your patch, correct? Thanks, David
