On Tue, 22 May 2001, Jun Sun wrote:
> I took a look of MIPS ABI in system V and found that the spec only specifies
> this extended call in C prototype:
>
> int _test_and_set(int *p, int v);
>
> It seems perfectly legal for us to add one more argument to store the return
> value while still have the function returns error. Of course, doing that will
> break binary compatibility.
We have _test_and_set() in the library. Implementing a clean underlying
_test_and_set() syscall is very high on my to-do list -- lack of time
prevents me from finishing it, unfortunately.
There is no point to mess with sysmips() any further, I think. The
library's _test_and_set() only calls sysmips() if the library was compiled
for ISA I systems. As I guess from reports on the list, ISA I systems are
a minority, mostly DECstations and possibly a few embedded systems. Most
people have ISA II+ and they do not need to call any syscall from
_test_and_set() at all. For ISA II+ systems the library implements
_test_and_set() in the userland, using ll/sc appropriately.
Anyone having ISA II+ systems only, please do yourself a favour and set
"-mips2" (or maybe even "-mips3") somewhere in your CFLAGS for all
compilations -- not only you'll get better optimized binaries, but you'll
get rid of this sysmips() problem as well.
> Otherwise, I think Flo's patch is the best fix to satisfy the spec and binary
> compatibility although it is a little clunky.
I'll have yet to look at the patch, but what I think is, we should get
sysmips() work as defined by the original spec (or as reverse-engineered,
as the real spec seems to be out of reach). Everything else belong to a
separate implementation.
Binary compatibility is not a necessity here. The only sysmips() client
is glibc at the moment, and it can be updated to use a new syscall at any
time.
In short: let's leave sysmips() semantics alone.
--
+ Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+ e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
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