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Re: [PATCH ARC 3/8] GAS: new ARC port
- From: Claudiu Zissulescu <claziss at gmail dot com>
- To: Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Binutils <binutils at sourceware dot org>, Cupertino Miranda <cmiranda at synopsys dot com>
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 16:41:25 +0200
- Subject: Re: [PATCH ARC 3/8] GAS: new ARC port
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <1441282821-24854-1-git-send-email-claziss at gmail dot com> <CAL0iMy3mjK19TOka+y5UvNHf4D4bmgpTcw0cCAh9JipWvyoRDg at mail dot gmail dot com> <55E9B2A7 dot 7090609 at redhat dot com> <55E9C85C dot 4030702 at gmail dot com> <55EDB0C8 dot 5040608 at redhat dot com>
Hi Nick,
>
> Hmmm, if the new values are already in use, then you had better stick
> with them. The question is - do binaries built with the old sources (ie
> prior to your patches) need to be supported ? This also leads to the
> question - why is this new port being made ? What is wrong with the old
> one ? If it is just a matter of supporting newer ARC variants, why
> can't the old port be extended ?
The current ARC port in the mainline binutils addresses only old Argonaut RISC processors (e.g. A4 processors). The new port drops the support for the old A4s, and adds support for the latest two families: ARCompact and ARCompact2. These new processors use different elf machine flags than the original ARC A4 processors: for ARC600/700, we use EM_ARC_COMPACT (93), while for ARC HS/EM, we use EM_ARC_COMPACT2 (195). To our knowledge, there is no one doing development or using the old ARC CPUs.
As for the in question e_flags values, they are valid only for ARC machines having e_machine flag set to EM_ARC (45). The new ARC port does not support this architecture. The architectures are different one from each other. Hence, there should be no conflicts between the binaries produced by the old binutils and the new one. I am sorry for my initial reply, it was a bit confusing.
Best,
Claudiu