adding binary comparisons to MIPS testsuite

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Chris,

: What do people think of adding binary comparisons to at least some
: of the tests in the existing MIPS gas testsuite, using the objdump 
: --show-raw-insn arg?

This is currently done for the ARM toolchain.  Have a look at
testsuite/gas/arm/arm7t.d.

: Given the amazing possibilities for different assembly of source on
: MIPS, this basically means:
: 
: (1) providing a new .d file for each variant you want to test,
: 
: (2) specifying the ISA to use in the/an #as: directive in each .d
: file.
:  
: It's a bit tedious, but on the other hand it's nice to know that in
: addition to the forward-backward translation done by
: assembly/disassembly being consistent, the actual translation to
: binary is correct.  8-)

Assuming of course that the binary values in the .d file are correct
and have not just been produced by running objdump --show-raw-insn and
then converting the output into a .d file.

Given that gas/testsuite/gas/mips/mips.exp already has lots of
conditional tests, I see no reason why you should not add more.  Try
to test on several variants though, to make sure that there are no
hidden gotchas.

Cheers
	Nick