PATCH: Add --alt-nops=short|long to x86/x86-64 assemblers

[Nick Clifton]

Hi H. J.

> x86/x86-64 assemblers don't support -mtune/-march/-mcpu.

Ahh.  How does the assembler know which instruction set variants are 
valid then ?  (I am thinking of the all the different SSE, PowerNow, etc 
variants).

> We need a switch to tell
> assembler if the new nop instructions can be used at all. Secondly,
> not all modern processors prefer "long" versions. We need another
> switch to tell which kind of the new nop instructions should be used,
> short or long.

In which case the default presumably ought to be the short version and 
the long version should only be enabled if explicitly requested via a 
command line switch.

> Maybe I should add -march= and -mtune= to assembler.

It sounds like it would be a good idea, although if it is only to 
support this new feature then you may not want to go that far.

Cheers
   Nick