On Sat, Jan 12, 2008 at 11:54:47PM +0100, Vit Herman wrote: > Andrew Doran wrote: >> I tried this out by disabling FP. The machine booted OK but a lot was >> broken. Almost all recent x86 processors have FP, including the embedded >> class ones, so I think it should be removed. > > I know it may sound strange and that decisions like this should probably be > based on technical reasons, but I think there are some other things to > consider. Sure, there are plenty of things to consider. Here are a few more: - None of the netbsd developers disagrees with you, in that it would be nice or desirable to have every possible system supported and working. - However, someone needs to show up and do the work. Offers of testing are all very well -- and absolutely essential and welcome -- but are not, in themselves sufficient, someone needs to write or maintain the code that is to be tested too. Perhaps someone will in this case. - So far it seems that the MATH_EMULATE code has bitrotted and is broken, and may have been for some time. So it's not just a matter of somebody missing a mailing list posting announcing removal of something that worked - it's also a case of nobody having reported a bug about the problem in all that time. That doesn't mean nobody's using it on old versions, but it does strengthen the perception that maybe it won't be much missed in the next release. - Removing MATH_EMULATE from the kernel *doesn't* mean machines without FPU can't run netbsd, or won't be supported. It just means that they will need their binaries compiled with -msoft-float, rather than relying on emulated cpu insructions. This will be faster anyway, and such machines these days will be used for special-purpose cases and will benefit in other ways from special-purpose builds specific to their needs. -- Dan.
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