problem building gmp on Mac G5

[Torbjorn Granlund]

Kate Minola <kminola at po1.glue.umd.edu> writes:

  And  from `make check` I get
  
  : FAIL: t-scanf
  : PASS: t-locale
  : ===================
  : 1 of 3 tests failed
  : ===================
  
  Question: Should I be worried?  (When code does not pass
  its own test suite I usually worry!)
  
Yes, you should be worried and you should indeed not use the
resulting libgmp.

We've tried to make GMP work with recent Apple compilers, but all
releases we've tried have had many bugs that cause miscompilation
of GMP.  Attempts to work around one bug has made us struck
another one.

More recently, I've decided to cease working on support for Mac
OS X in GMP and return Swox's G5 machine to Apple.  (This
decision is due to Apple's failure to fulfill the contract with
Swox about Panther upgrade.  It was a big mistake to do business
with Apple Store Europe, in particular as there are plenty of
warnings about them on the Net.)

  Ideally I would like gmp to take advantage of the 
  64-bit architecture of the G5.  But for right now,
  I would just like ANY build of gmp to work!

A true 64-bit libgmp requires a 64-bit OS.  Apple hasn't
announced plans for that yet.  Speculation on the Net suggest
that it is not going to happen within at least 2 years.

(The reason we need a 64-bit OS is because some important
instructions work in 32-bit mode when only 32-bit addressing is
available.  This can be considered a minor flaw in the PowerPC
architecture.)

-- 
Torbjörn