[PATCH] Improve and consolidate sparc PIC assembler.

[Torbjorn Granlund]

David Miller <davem at davemloft.net> writes:

  From: Torbjorn Granlund <tg at gmplib.org>
  Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:43:58 +0200
  
  > If we cannot make an configure test, we need to know if there is a
  > release where the assembler can be trusted.
  
  After some discussions with my Oracle contact, I think a configure
  test will actually be easy, the assembler on Solaris 10 emits well
  formed version information.
  
  For example "as -V" gives:
  
  as: SunOS 5.10 118683-09 Patch 01/23/2013
  
  So we can use that to detect if the proper fixes are installed.
  
I have a slight preference of checking for functionality than of
checking aganst a database of version numbers.  My experience is that
version number formatting changes forth and back, and that it is
therefore fragile to detect all faulty ones.

The old as uses one format:

as: Sun Compiler Common 10 Patch 05/06/2005

And the new one another:

as: SunOS 5.10 118683-10 Patch 03/14/2013

And how about SunOS 9 with a patched assembler...?

The horror example is Mac OS X.  Their compiler tools are buggier than
all other tools put together, and the version numbers and apparent date
stamps seem absolutely non-linear.  I had to give up supporting most
"Xcode" releases, and just tell people "try another Xcode release" when
they run into bugs with GMP.

But if a real feature/bug test is too hard, or hard to make reliable,
version detection is what we have to do.

-- 
Torbjörn