Re: IRIX: Expecting n32 objects

[Rainer Orth]

Olaf Weber writes:

> As far as I can tell they should have defaulted to mips4 N32 -- at
> least when running IRIX 6.5 -- this is going by what the
> to-be-installed /etc/compiler.defaults says.  But the R8Ks were weird
> beasts at the best of times.

This is true with IRIX 6.5, but was different with 6.2.  I still hate those
machine-dependent defaults, though: if you have old mips3-only machines
around, you have to be careful when building on a mips4-machine ;-(.  I
really think the default should be last-common-denominator (i.e. n32/mips3).

> Yes, the /etc/compiler.defaulst specifies both ABI and ISA.  Which
> means that for maximum portability (meaning in this case the ability
> to compile a program on one machine and run it on another) you should
> explicitly specify both mips3 and N32.

Exactly: only SGI makes such a mess out of this situation.  Other companies
default to (say) SPARC V7 or Alpha EV4, with options to allow for code
optimized for the compilation machine.

        Rainer