Re: glibc-2.1 on PowerPC cannot disable floating-point

[Geoff Keating <geoffk@ozemail.com.au>]

> From: "Jack Howarth" <howarth@bromo.med.uc.edu>
> Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 22:00:21 -0500
> 
> Geoff,
>    What do you make of this egcs/gcc GNU ego war over glibc 2.1. This
> whole thing is insane. Anyway, Ulrich told me that the tarballs for
> glibc 2.1 are still on sourceware.cygnus.com. Do you have any impressions
> of where this all leaves linuxppc? Would it still be legal for linuxppc
> to ship a glibc 2.1 release?

Yes.  The glibc tarball on sourceware.cygnus.com, like all [other]
released versions of glibc and all snapshots, is under the GPL.  You
may distribute it as you wish.

> Ulrich indicated a glibc 2.1.1pre1 will
> be out soon. However if the primary motivation for that release is to
> add gcc support to glibc 2.1 I don't see where that is in our interest.
> Considering how awful our gcc 2.x release is and the total disinterest gcc
> has shown to ppc support compared to the egcs folks. Also I can't imagine
> that pre1 will be as stable as glibc 2.1 and we also will probably end up
> in binutils of the week again. What do you think?

glibc on powerpc will not be compilable under gcc 2.8.1 unless someone
puts in the very substantial work needed to make gcc 2.8.1 reliable.
I do not have the time to do this.  I don't know of anyone who is
working on it; in fact, I don't know of anyone who is working on gcc
2.8.1 on powerpc at all.

I recommend compiling glibc on powerpc under gcc 2.8.1 only if you
enjoy debugging gcc---and even in that case, I suggest trying the
latest egcs snapshot first, the bugs there are probably more
interesting :-).

-- 
Geoffrey Keating <geoffk@ozemail.com.au>