how long to keep support for gcc on x86?

[Peter Wemm]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 12:29 PM, John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
> Adrian Chadd wrote this message on Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 23:44 -0800:
>>
>> People are still ironing out kinks/differences with clang. Anyone
>> saying otherwise is likely pushing an agenda. :-)
>>
>> Thus I think adding clang-only code to the system right now is very,
>> very premature. There still seem to be reasons to run systems on GCC
>> instead of clang.
>>
>> If you have a need for new instruction support, perhaps look at adding
>> it to our base GCC for the time being?
>
> I did look at it briefly, but I don't know gcc's internals, and it would
> take me 5+ hours to do it, while someone who does know gcc would take
> abount a half an hour (just a guess)...  I don't have the free time I
> used to, otherwise I would of done it by now..

It seems to me that since clang is the default compiler for the
platforms that have AES-NI that the following could be done:

* get the inline AES-NI stuff in and debugged and solid.
* .. without breaking the existing gcc-compatible code
* once the support is solid, decide what the appropriate thing to do for gcc is.

.. so long as the existing code doesn't get broken.

Trying to do backwards compatibility port to gcc with a moving target
has potential to be a work multiplier.

-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com; KI6FJV
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