196985 - NSPR forces Mips3 with MipsPro

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(NSPR :: NSPR, defect)

Description

[Nick Blievers]

BZ 4471: talks about changing config/IRIX.mk to force MipsPro to use mips3. Why?

Surely how it is built should be specified via an environment variable (CFLAGS) 
or the system defaults (/etc/compiler.defaults).

Forcing it to mips3 is very limiting.

This occurs in the following files:
nsprpub/config/IRIX.mk
nsprpub/configure.in (and of course nsprpub/configure)

Comment 1

[Nick Blievers]

Attachment: nsprpub/configure - dont force mips3

Comment 2

[Nick Blievers]

Attachment: nsprpub/config/IRIX.mk - dont forces mips3

Comment 3

[Nick Blievers]

Attachment: nsprpub/configure.in - dont force mips3

Comment 4

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Unless SGI does not want Mozilla and Netscape browsers
to run on mips3, I can't make this change.

The -mips3 flag is necessary to ensure that the binaries
run on mips3 even if the build machine is mips4.

Comment 5

[Nick Blievers]

If you set CFLAGS, or you set the compiler.defaults file to compile mips3, the
binaries will be be mips3, regardless of whether the build system is mips3 or not.
IRIX is built completly on mips4 machines, and is (mostly) compiled mips3 for the
very reasons you mention. However, restricting the build system to ONLY allow
mips3 is wrong. In some cases we want to compile things at Misp4, to take 
advantage of the broader instruction set, and gain some performance benefits.

Comment 6

[Wan-Teh Chang]

This is a philosophical difference is build systems.

NSPR's build system was designed with a cross-platform developer
in mind.  We routinely build on more than seven operating systems,
some of which have 32-bit and 64-bit builds.  We cannot possibly
remember the best CFLAGS for all these build configuraions.  So we
checked in the best CFLAGS in our build system.  This design does
not have the flexibilty that people who know what they are doing
want.  (NSS's build system, mozilla/security/coreconf, made the
same design decision.)

Sorry, I can't make this change.