processor compatibility when building packages

Chris Faylor cgf@cygnus.com
Sat Jul 8 22:41:00 GMT 2000


On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 12:32:50AM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
>DJ Delorie wrote:
>>>Does cygwin only officially work on i686, so that it is okay to use
>>>these routines and break compatibility with older systems?
>>
>>Please do not break older systems.
>
>My inclination was to maintain as much compatibility as possible.
>However, I was confused since the official platform triple is now
>i686-pc-cygwin, not i386-pc-cygwin or ix86-pc-cygwin.  It *USED* to be
>i386- but was changed sometime in the last six months.  Why?  What does
>the new triple signify?

The last time I asked about this, I was informed that using the
i686-pc-cygwin triple does not break anything.  You still have to use
special compiler flags to create code that is unusable on older CPUs.
I've sent mail to a gcc engineer to confirm this but he's probably
getting sick of me asking this question.

In general, I think we'll probably get fewer questions using i686 than
i386.  Since the i?86-pc-cygwin directory is disappearing, this may
not be as much of an issue.

cgf


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