Not much has been said about floating point support for a while now. Maybe it is time to revive the discussion? Before even a decision is made on what formats to use for floating point support, there exists the problem of the compiler treating floating point expressions the same way that the target does. What do you think of these two ideas? ----------------------------------- 1. A 6502 simulator that can be employed by the compiler, linker, and assembler at compile/link/assemble-time. This simulator would execute the same 6502 routines that will be used in runtime library for floating point operations. Pros: the floating point routines would only have to be written *once*... in 6502. And they will behave the same regardless of the environment that the compiler is running on. Changing formats would only require rewriting the 6502 routines. Cons: requires the simulator. Not a huge con, as that could be fun to write. :-) And this might introduce a chicken-and-egg problem in building CC65, but I'm sure this could be solved with some cleverness. ----------------------------------- 2. Link the compiler with MPFR/GMP Pros: platform-independent floating point support for the compiler. Could easily support any format decided on without having to care about the compiler environment. Cons: floating point routines would still need to be written for the 6502. Two extra dependencies to make CC65 more difficult to build. Possible licensing issues. ----------------------------------- Regards Kevin ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list send mail to majordomo@musoftware.de with the string "unsubscribe cc65" in the body(!) of the mail.Received on Fri Apr 2 07:14:53 2010
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