[U-Boot] Testing report for i.MX51 using Linaro/Ubuntu gcc 4.6.3 (from Precise repositories), libgcc, etc.

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Matt,

In message <CAKGA1b=KecRhXzJWor6xRTY2p6A1ukofoPoHm-1DwQqRw8aCOQ at mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> Marek Vasut insists I report this to the list, so here goes;

Indeed such problem reports are valuable information, so thanks for
the message.

> This is not the first problem we've ever had with the Linaro gcc
> toolchain, especially not with 4.6. So far, reverting to building
> using gcc 4.4.7 has solved all the problems, and we're using

Did you report this to Linaro as well?  Because this is where the
people sit that should fix such issues.  We can do nothing here -
except to avoid such broken tool chains.

> USE_PRIVATE_LIBGCC by default now anyway because I don't see the point
> in using the one provided with the toolchain if it is such a huge
> unknown and U-Boot provides a compatible feature anyway.

Please do NOT do this by default.  USE_PRIVATE_LIBGCC is meant as a
workaround for known-to-be-broken tool chains for which no alternative
exists.  In your case you hcan chose a working tool chain, so please
rather do this.

By always using USE_PRIVATE_LIBGCC you just close your eyes for
potential tool chain problems - why exactly would you trust in a tool
chain where such a simple and fundamental piece of code asl ibgcc is
broken?

> I'm not sure what anyone on the list is going to make of this or if it
> influences some design decisions anywhere else in U-Boot, just that I
> was nagged incessantly to "report my findings" - we all knew the
> Linaro compiler generally sucks already, though, right?

Thanks for the report and the clear words; maybe you could send a
similar report or a link to this posting to Linux, for example to
Ramana Radhakrishnan <ramana.radhakrishnan at linaro.org> ?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
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