Re: More ARM binutils fuckage

["Michael K. Edwards" <medwards.linux@gmail.com>]

On 12/5/06, Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> There is no such thing as soft VFP.

Patches have been floating around for quite some time that implement
soft float with VFP parameter passing conventions (which notably
implies native endianness, unlike FPA).  They all seem to derive from
Nicolas Pitre's patch at
http://lists.arm.linux.org.uk/pipermail/linux-arm/2003-October/006436.html
, which is said to have some bugs but to supply the majority of the
needed functionality.  (See, for instance,
http://www.busybox.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/branches/buildroot.mjn3/toolchain/gcc/3.4.6/arm-softfloat.patch.conditional?rev=14854&view=auto.)
 I assume that I'm not the first to fix it up for gcc 4.1.1.

> I can only talk from the requirements of the kernel.  gcc 3.4.3 is
> the minimum for ARM, which with binutils 2.17 will allow you to build
> the kernel as OABI in *any* configuration.  No patches required for
> either.

It would be nice if this appeared prominently in
Documentation/arm/whatever so that vendors who are stuck on gcc 3.3
(and binutils so old that they comment things out in vmlinux.lds) can
be encouraged to move forward.

Cheers,
- Michael