Subject: Re: Shared library support for ARM ELF
To: Matt Thomas <matt@3am-software.com>
From: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com>
List: port-arm
Date: 07/16/2001 16:47:35
> At 10:31 AM 7/16/2001 +0100, Richard Earnshaw wrote:
> >We should be careful not to start distributing shared-library based ELF
> >builds until we are certain that we have got the ABI of the compiler
> >correct.
> 
> That is something I have no idea to verify.  

The only way I can think of is to implement some assembly functions that 
explicitly test the layout of calling conventions.  Then write C functions 
that work with them: dispatch and receiver tests have to be written.  We 
should probably have regress/abi/arch/arm (or something like that) with 
tests for this.  Apart from anything else, such a set of tests would make 
importing future compilers much easier.

> Who's going to make sure that
> that's the case?  [Is that something you'll do, Richard?]  What's left to
> be done?

Well, we certainly don't have stack alignment implemented yet.  I think we 
sort of have VFP endian floats (Ben sort of hacked that up), but I haven't 
tried it against the full implementation I'm working on.

R.