2010/5/24 FX <fxcoud...@gmail.com>:
> Dear gfortranners,
>
> For some work-related issue, I find the need to switch my code regularly
> between double precision real arithmetics and quad-float. I currently do that
> with a proprietary compiler whose brand name matches the regexp
> "^In{1,}[t]\x65l$", but I'd be even more happy to do that with gfortran (my
> usual compiler) and that gives me an excuse to get to do something I've long
> wanted to achieve for fun: quad-float integration in gfortran.
Nice!
I have occasionally missed it as well, and had to resort to things like XBLAS.
> [...] There is one more issue, which is how to best integrate this? [...]
I think it would be a boon to gfortran if this also supported
cross-compiling to targets which support mpfr, or at least does not
pursue an approach that makes this more difficult that it has to be.
Thus, option 2 has my vote, because people out there have built mpfr
for all kinds of targets where gcc runs natively, so the results of
their efforts can easily be re-used. Actually I like option 3, but
only as long as it does not collect bit-rot: I would always prefer
building mpfr myself over debugging the GCC build system.
Thinking about this some more, option 3 might actually make more
sense, because then the regular bootstrap is enough to produce a
quad-capable cross-gfortran, where otherwise you would have to
bootstrap, build target-mpfr and then edit the specs file accordingly
(assuming you don't have the crosstools lying around to build
target-mpfr before bootstrap). Yuck!
Cheers,
Dennis
