Re: hf/sf [Was Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/misc/raspberrypi-userland]

[Justin Cormack <justin%specialbusservice.com@localhost>]

On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 7:38 PM, Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost> 
wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 04:56:04AM +0000, Jun Ebihara wrote:
>> Module Name:  pkgsrc
>> Committed By: jun
>> Date:         Sun Nov 10 04:56:04 UTC 2013
>>
>> Modified Files:
>>       pkgsrc/misc/raspberrypi-userland: Makefile
>>
>> Log Message:
>> support earmhf.
>> ONLY_FOR_PLATFORM=      NetBSD-*-*arm*
>> oked by jmcneill.
>
> Thanks for doing this, Jun-san.
>
> But in the big picture, having hf and sf versions of a platform's
> userland, in the year 2013, is, well, sub-optimal.  I don't think the
> ramifications of the change were considered in enough detail, and we
> need to discuss it, before we have to start growing new architectures
> in pkgsrc for this and that.
>
> Can't we lean on what was done for i386/i387 twenty years ago, and
> use a userland library to decide whether to use softfloat in the
> absence of hardware?
>
> So let's discuss...

armhf is not just about whether there is or is not hardfloat, it is
also a different ABI. Its more like mips o32 vs n32 in that it is an
ABI change that requires some hardware requirements too.

Justin