Softfloat on ARM?

[David Fokkema <dfokkema@ileos.nl>]

Hi group,

Regarding floating point operations in ImageMagick / NetPBM there were
suggestions to try out the EABI port. Right now, that seems a bit
painful. However, on the Debian EABI port page in the wiki it says that
the current way of working (oldabi) is about ten times slower than a
program compiled with softfloat, if I understand correctly. I tried
simply to use an -msoft-float compiler switch. That issued a 'missing
-lfloat' error and that seems to be a very old library removed from
debian. IEEE softfloat is software released a long time ago which only
creates an object file and doesn't have an ARM template???

I'm really confused.

Is it possible for me to just compile ImageMagick / NetPBM with some
sort of softfloat support which doesn't generate hard illegal
instruction faults and how could I do that?

A bit rephrased: I can't figure out how the EABI people will support my
slug?

If it is possible, is there still a speed gain to be expected from using
the EABI port?

Thanks,

David