Does ARMEL toolchain include NEON support?

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com>]

Hi Everyone,

I'm investigating a failed build for ARMEL. I don't have access to the
build machine so I have to study the logs or ask our package
maintainer to run commands for us.

The build log is at
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=libcrypto%2B%2B&suite=experimental
(package) and https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=libcrypto%2B%2B&arch=armel&ver=8.1.0-1&stamp=1551251751&raw=0
(ARMEL).

We have tried to use -mfpu=neon and -mfloat-abi=softfp or
-mfloat-abi=hard for the NEON specific files but both produce compile
failures. "NEON specific files" are ones with the name *_simd.cpp,
like aria_simd.cpp.

I test the build locally with about 6 ARM dev-boards and have not
encountered the problem. However, all of the dev-board are hard float
machines.

My question is, is it possible to use the NEON unit when building with
ARMEL? If so, then how do we do it?