Fwd: if i have a 486 target, shouldnt i build an i486 target instead of a 686 target?

[Nathan Kidd]

John Utz wrote:
 > 686 has instructions that dont exist on 486. i am wondering if i need
 > to do something different with my toolset to make sure that my libraries
 > dont contain any 686 code.

Gcc has the options:
	-march=<CPU> (lowest-required-cpu) and
	-mcpu=<CPU> (optimize for this cpu)

When dealing with CPU targetting you have opcodes, and then instruction 
ordering.  If you are targetting a 486, and only 486 then -march and 
-mcpu should be i486.  If you want to be able to run code on your 486, 
but most people will have have 686, then you could use -march=i486 
-mcpu=i686 so only opcodes up to 486 will be used, but the instruction 
ordering will be designed for max permformance on a 686.

For further deatils see: 
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.2/gcc/i386-and-x86-64-Options.html

Hope that helps,

-Nathan

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