Re: patch to add AES intrinsics to gcc

on 23/08/2013 15:34 Nathan Whitehorn said the following:
> On 08/23/13 07:26, Andriy Gapon wrote:
>> on 23/08/2013 14:06 David Chisnall said the following:
>>> Our gcc is from 2007.  It has no C11, no C++11 support.  It has bugs in its
>>> atomic generation so you can't use it sensibly without lots of inline
>>> assembly (which it doesn't support for newer architectures) for
>>> multithreaded things.
>>>
>>> Our libstdc++ is ancient and doesn't work with modern C++ codebases.
>> On the other hand these tools are perfect for building FreeBSD kernel and base.
>> Extrapolating my experience with base GCC I am very confident in it as a
>> FreeBSD development tool.
>> Extrapolating my experience with Clang I am not yet confident in it as a
>> FreeBSD development tool.
>>
> 
> This isn't even true.

It's been true for me.

> As CPUs gain new features, the set of available intrinsics
> gets more and more ancient, requiring ever more patching, workarounds, and
> #ifdef. Just look at the original subject of this thread!

Yes.
I am more comfortable with incremental changes.  Bugs in those can be pinpointed
quite easily and I do not affect those who don't use the new features.

> We're just talking about the default of a make.conf setting here. Switching to
> clang is a long-term goal of the project for good reason.

I agree.

> Other vendors (Apple,
> for instance) have made the plunge first. This seems like as good a time as any
> to do it. And if it goes wrong somehow, we have lots of BETAs and it is trivial
> to change back at any time.

I am totally comfortable with clang being default in head.  I am also
comfortable with gcc not being built by default in head.
I am not yet comfortable with clang being default in a release.  Even .0 one.

JIMHO, it needs to age a little bit more.

-- 
Andriy Gapon