Re: long double support in cygwin

["J. Johnston" <jjohnstn at cygnus dot com>]

Stephen L Moshier wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> This was posted to cygwin@sources.redhat.com but the response
> was that the topic should be taken up in the newlib mailing list.
> 
> On trying to use cygwin development tools for the first time, I am
> disappointed to find no long double support in printf or math library.
> Could someone in authority please indicate what is the policy on this?
> Why is it not there?  

Newlib started out as in-house open source ANSI C library with some UNIX extensions
that was well-suited for embedded systems.  It was created from a number of different
sources including some free software packages (e.g. the math library routines using integer
operations were written by Sun Microsystems).  I do not know if the original math package from Sun
ever had long double support, but either way long double math functions were not added, they weren't
required to meet the ANSI C standard, and no past customer ever contracted us to add them for their
embedded platform.  The lack of true long double support in printf and scanf also has not been an
issue to past embedded customers.

> Would you put in the support if it were
> available?  

Yes, contributions / patches to newlib are welcome.
Note that newlib cannot accept any GPL or proprietary code.

-- Jeff Johnston (Red Hat Inc)