[gentoo-embedded] gcc configure for ARM ep93xx: --with-float-abi= does not exist

[Martin Guy]

Hi
  I too have been trying to set hard maverick crunch FPU code
generation as the default for a compiler here, and I see some people
here made the same mistake of configuring GCC using
--with-float-abi=softfp
This option does nothing and is silently ignored (well ok, "configure"
sets $with_float_abi but nothing ever inspects that) - you still have
to supply --with-float-abi=softfp at runtime to get hard FP
instructions, obtaining soft float otherwise.

There is currently no way to select softfp Maverick code generation by default.
for GCC 4.3.2, the closest configure options are, as well as
--with-float=softfp and --with-fpu=maverick:

--with-arch=armv4t the build fails when it tries to compile hard FPA
instructions into libgcc,
--with-cpu=ep9312 it compiles armv5t instructions into libgcc
--with-arch=ep9312 the assembler barfs saying that ep9312 is not a
recognised architecture.

There is even one check that looks for --target=ep9312-* and selects
default fpu=Maverick but I very much doubt that works.

This whole area is bit-rotten. I think the 'ep9312' should be
eliminated,or mapped into arm920t+maverick early on, and everything
should work off -m[cf]pu= the same as every other fpu. Unfortunately,
checks for ep9312 are spread through the config scripts and source
like a fungus.

    M