[Please keep debian-glibc in Cc: as I am not subscribed to debian-alpha]
Hi alpha users!
As requested a long time ago in the BTS (bug #229251), I have built
an EV67 optimized version of the glibc. It uses EV67 specific
instructions, but also optimized assembly code for the following
functions: ffs, memchr, memcpy, memset, sqrt, strcat, strchr, strcpy,
strlen, strncat, strncpy and strrchr.
As I don't own an alpha machine I am asking here for some tests. I am
looking for people having a machine with an EV67 compatible CPU, but
*also* people having a machine with an *older* CPU.
- For people having an EV67 compatible CPU, please install
libc6.1-alphaev67 and verify it is used. You can see that using ldd,
for example:
'ldd /bin/ls'. It should uses libraries from /lib/ev67/
Some benchmarking would be really nice to decide if this package is
really useful or not.
- For people having an *older* CPU, I would like you to test that those
libraries are not used, because I am not really sure about the hwcap
code. It could be a bit risky, so it may be a good idea to do that in
a chroot. Basically, install libc6.1-alphaev67. If your system still
work it's a good sign. Then use ldd to verify those libraries are not
used. Note that in case of problem a rm -rf /lib/ev67 should make your
system working again.
The packages are available on http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/ev67
Good tests!
Cheers,
Aurelien