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On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 02:08 +0200, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote: |
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> On Friday 07 July 2006 01:54, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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> > | No, we never spent years telling them not to use your so-called |
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> > | "CFLAGS hacks" that are rather a proper usage of what the compiler |
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> > | gives you. |
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> > Wrong. We did. |
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> Then you were wrong. I could have spent time explaining them when they make |
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> sense and why they don't in their usecases. If you did, well, then you really |
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> need to know better what you do because you seem to me pretty confused |
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> yourself, and I feel pity for you. |
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> |
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Yes, we did. Were we wrong? Out of a purest point of view ... maybe. |
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The problem was though that earlier gcc's was very bad at generating |
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sse/sse2, and sometimes mmx code. |
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Users being what they are though (ricers should say it all), they |
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enabled every flag that sounded like it could make their old box two |
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times faster. This included -msse, -msse2, etc. Which quite frankly |
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produced bad code in many cases. So we told the users to not add any |
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-m* flags, and let gcc do its job with the proper -march. |
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So yeah, I can see that general use flags for cpu features might become |
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more tedious with the many new modules of processors out there, but to |
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say handle it by adding -msse, etc to CFLAGS, will surely if not on |
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gcc4, but then on gcc3 systems just ask for trouble. |
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And yes, I know you are saying that that is not exactly what you are |
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proposing, but the users will see it as a clear passport to stick all |
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those nice sounding flags just right back in, and then it will be too |
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late to tell them its not proper thing to do when the bugs start |
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flooding in. |
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Anyway, I tried to give some history and some what ifs, but as I |
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admitted many times in the past, I am no great writer. You had to be |
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'there' I guess, *shrug*. |
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-- |
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Martin Schlemmer |