Bug#823672: Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) is an SIMD instruction set extension to the x86 architecture
To: bug report 823672
So the BTS has the message below
----- Forwarded message from Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> -----
Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 04:15:23 +0100
From: Wookey <wookey@wookware.org>
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Bug#823672: Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) is an SIMD instruction set extension to the x86 architecture
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12)
+++ Christian Seiler [2016-05-07 16:14 +0200]:
> On 05/07/2016 03:59 PM, Geert Stappers wrote:
> > I now have a better idea _why_ a sse-suport package.
I do think that this sort of ISA-level checking would be best done via
dpkg and package metadata, although this sse-support mechanism will
obviously work. i.e the cpontrol file says what ISA features are
wanted and dpkg can not install it if those HWCAPS are not available
(or indeed install alternate versions that will work if they are
available).
We worked up a prototype spec for this a couple of years ago (at the
bootstrap sprint), but it needs the namespace and granularity fleshing
out: what is the set of HWCAPS listed in each package, what is
presumed to be 'base' that we don't list individually, and so on.
Hopefully one day someone will care enough about this to implement it
:-) It's handy for a range of purposes, like i386/486/586/686 moves,
SSE/altivec/NEON usage, and particularly MIPS which has a lot of
variation in available ISA. It would have let us deal neatly with the
Raspi ARM v6 vs v7 baseline issue too.
> @Adam: One suggestion though: since this might also come in handy
> in other places, I'd recommend you name the source package something
> more generic (such as cpu-support or so, assuming that's not taken
> already, I didn't check)
Seems to me that isa-support or isa-check or hwcaps-support are better
names (it's about the ISA user or the hwcaps available, not the cpu in
general).
Wookey
--
Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Groeten
Geert Stappers
--
Leven en laten leven
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