[uClibc]PowerPC support

[AVENARD,JEAN-YVES (HP-Australia,ex2)]

I don't know much about the PowerPC, but only a month ago I knew nothing
about the SH either.
Despite it took less than two weeks to have a working version of uClibc for
the SH CPU.
So I reckon porting uClibc, based on the fact that glibc is available for
the PowerPC will not take much longer.

The native code required for uClibc is really minimal. Basically just
loading some registers and calling a function. setjmp and longjmp will
require some native code too, but you can almost completely re-use the glibc
code.

When doing the SH code, I simply looked at the i386 and arm code and did the
same using SH instructions. It's that easy.
Have a look at this web site to see what are the calling convention for the
PowerPC CPU, and implement it for uClibc.

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/gnupro99r1/6_embed/embPowerPC.html

Have fun

Jean-Yves
---
Jean-Yves Avenard
Hewlett-Packard - Embedded and Personal Systems / Platform Technology Group
351 Burwood Hwy, Forest Hill, Victoria 3130 - Australia
Tel: +61 3 88773740 - Fax: +61 3 9802 7714 - mail: jean-yves_avenard at hp.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geir Frode Raanes [mailto:geirfrs at invalid.ed.ntnu.no]
> Sent: Tuesday, 27 February 2001 20:39 PM
> To: Erik Andersen
> Cc: uclibc at uclibc.org
> Subject: [uClibc]PowerPC support
> 
> 
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Erik Andersen wrote:
> 
> > I have set things up so there will be a daily snapshot 
> tarball created 
> > once a day.  Please let me know if you have any problems or 
> if you notice
> > the snapshot not being updated once per day:
> >     ftp://uclibc.org/uClibc-snapshot.tar.gz
> 
> I note that there are 'sysdeps' for ARM, i386 and m68k only. 
> While this is fair enough, we use XPC855T PowerPC. I was kind 
> of hoping uClibc would support PowerPC. Mostly to let me see a
> simplified, working sysdep for PowerPC. We do have the memory 
> to support full glibc, not uncommon for PowerPC systems. 
> 
> But vanilla glibc always seem to bomb out in the PowerPC
> sysdep section during cross compile, and I am not even close
> to understand what went wrong, not to mention how to fix it.
> So, is there a way to copy strategic files from 'sysdeps/powerpc'
> in glibc to uClibc and have it work? I suppose not.
> 
> If not, could anyone please spare the time to explain what the
> reoccuring files in the different 'sysdeps/archxx' directories 
> of glibc are for and what their relative dependencies are?
> Not surprisingly, they consist of inline assembly and gcc 'insn's.
> I am mostly interested in the FPU part and how to get rid of it, 
> relying on Linux kernel FPU emulation. The "--without-fp" option
> still gives me FPU problems in the 'sysdeps/powerpc' section.
> Also, the 'sysdeps/common' sounds like a contradiction in terms...
> 
> 
> --
> Geir Frode Raanes
> [HW] Desing Engineer
> Norsk Elektro Optikk
> 
> 
> 
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