Thoughts about a floating point exception fix

[John Klos <john%ziaspace.com@localhost>]

I've been thinking about issues with floating point exceptions on VAXen. 
Currently it's difficult to compile packages such as python which have 
tons of floating point tests because so many of them fail because of 
infinities or NaNs. awk is still problematic when used in pkgsrc because 
of FP exceptions.

What if we made sure all the soft-float stuff is in libm and compiled 
certain tools such as awk and selected pkgsrc packages to use software 
floating point? I think this would be a good way to fix some of these 
longstanding issues.

Of course there'd be complications such as linking hardware floating point 
libraries with software floating point programs, but even a statically 
linked awk would be a big help.

Thoughts?

John Klos