Re: Debian ports for RiscPC, ARM710, etc.

[Philip Blundell <philb@gnu.org>]

>How do I do that?  If I configure gcc using --with-cpu=strongarm, I'm
>going to get the halfword instructions.  Is there another option I can
>use?  ie. --with-cpu=armv4?  Or is this going to require patching gcc?

Basically you can't at the moment.  It wouldn't be any big deal to add an 
option to gcc to inhibit halfword instructions but allow all other ARMv4 
enhancements, but so far I haven't done it because there's been no pressing 
need and it seemed like a needless complication.  Feel free to make a patch to 
egcs to implement this; it might make life slightly easier for the Acorn 
people.

>Or perhaps the StrongARM RiscPC is so rare, it's not worth decreasing
>performance for the other StrongARM machines (like the NetWinder)?

To be honest I think this is the case.  The number of Acorn machines running 
Linux is really pretty small.  Since most future ARM machines are likely to 
support halfwords and the like it seems sensible to go with that as the 
default.

p.