[PATCH] MIPS: gas: alter 64 or 32 for r6 triples if march is implicit

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 8 May 2023, YunQiang Su wrote:

> > they need to get at their input data through an assembly source, via the
> > `.incbin' pseudo-op (invented many years ago to solve this very problem).
> > I was bitten by this issue decades ago too, even before `.incbin' existed.
> >
> 
> Yes. You introduced this option to me, while
> 1) GLib guys refused this way

 What can I say?  If you find a bug in a piece of software and its authors 
refuse to fix it, then perhaps they should change industry as they have an 
attitude problem.

 I've seen it before, I once reported a crash due to a stack overrun (an 
access was made beyond the bottom of the stack, which wasn't mapped) in a 
proprietary binary library we used at my previous job place and the vendor 
refused to debug and fix it claiming it cannot happen.  We stopped working 
with said vendor.

 Maintainers of other software packages do not appear to have this problem 
and accept that they may have made a mistake.  I don't remember where I've 
last seen a piece of software converted to use `.incbin' for portability 
reasons, but I did see it happen.  Also search the Internet for `"objcopy" 
"incbin"' and see how often the matter pops up.

> 2) Few peopel know about.

 Well, software development is a complex matter and competence is unevenly 
spread I suppose.  We've had this pseudo-op for over 20 years now: 
<https://sourceware.org/legacy-ml/binutils/2001-06/msg00817.html> and it 
isn't unique to GAS according to the originator.

> If most of any arch can work, but us, it's MIPS's bug: we cannot
> change the whole world.

 It's not a MIPS bug, and I have seen it elsewhere too.  For example: 
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-binutils/2014-01/msg00037.html>.  
Software maintainers need to accept all the world's not a VAX/x86/whatever 
and that if something works by chance in the majority of cases, it does 
not mean it is correct.

 You're right in that we can't fix all the world though, so if maintainers
of a given piece of software cannot be persuaded to accept a valid fix, 
you can still keep the fix locally or drop the package.

  Maciej