Re: BFD_ASSEMBLER, bignum questions

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com> writes:
>
>
> > A couple random GAS questions that the current sources are not
> > answering for me:
> >
> > * Are there any non-BFD configurations still in use? It looks like
> > configure can generate some, but they mostly seem really obscure,
> > maybe they're no longer in use.
>
> Do you mean non-BFD, or non-BFD_ASSEMBLER?
And here I thought they were the same thing...

> BFD_ASSEMBLER is always used for alpha, arm, i386, ia64, mips, ns32k,
> pdp11, ppc, and sparc.  It is always used for elf, ecoff, and som.
> What's left is a29k, h8300, h8500, i960, m68k, m88k, ns32k, or32, sh,
> tahoe, tic80, vax, w65, z8k for COFF and aout targets.
>
> BFD is used for all COFF targets, even those which do not use
> BFD_ASSEMBLER (such targets define BFD_HEADERS).  There are some aout
> targets which do not use BFD at all.  I do not know whether any of
> these are in common use.
Hmm, they mostly seem ancient. Has there been any program of
obsoleting unused configs, or do people actually test that all
of these still work? Non-BFD would seem hard to make work as a
cross for instance.

Every time I see #ifdef BFD_ASSEMBLER, I get a gigantic urge
to drop everything else and hack it out.

> > * Is the bignum code actually needed? 64-bit values seem to depend
> > on 64-bit BFD and do 64-bit arithmetic, so I don't see how bignum
> > code would ever need to kick in.
>
> The bignum code is not limited to 64-bit values.  For example, it is
> used to support the .octa pseudo-op.
Ah.

Stan