Re: [patches] A few questions on contributing to eglibc

["H.J. Lu" <hjl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ryan,

On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 02:30:53PM -0500, Ryan Arnold wrote:
> Hi H.J.
> 
> This reply isn't related to your questions (Jim should probably answer
> those) but rather to submission of DFP/BID support.  I just wanted to let
> you know that Peter Eberlein (my team member) is working with Jim Blandy
> right now so we can get libdfp in shape to submit to EGLIBC as well.  Our
> general framework is here:
> 
> www.penguinppc.org/dev/glibc/dfp.html
> 
> Version 0.7 is pretty much what we're going to submit to EGLIBC (plus a few
> forthcoming patches).
> 
> BID specific support will tuck into the existing framework nicely in
> dfp/sysdeps/
> 

Intel BID library will provide a complete set of optimized DFP
functions as specified in DFP TR. I only enabled the part of Intel
BID library in gcc to support DFP intrinsics. I don't think
we need to put another copy of Intel BID library in eglibc for
those DFP functions.

DFP functions in Intel BID library take/return unsigned integers
instead of DFP types. A wrapper function is still needed in eglibc.
I am thinking to build/install libbid_shared.a and libbid_nonshared.a 
in gcc. The main usage of them is to build libm.so and libm.a in
eglibc. Building libm.so can be done with --whole-archive -lbid_shared.
It will be tricky to include libbid_nonshared.a in libm.a. Maybe
we can use "ld -r -o bid.o --whole-archive -lbid_nonshared" to
generate bid.o.


H.J.