[Openmcl-devel] OpenMCL Versions

[Gary Byers]

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006, Andrew Shalit wrote:

> OK, it looks like we have the following versions of OpenMCL:
>
> -- LinuxPPC 32-bit -- available as version 1.0.
> -- Linux x86-64 -- not available in a public distribution but almost done?

There's also a Linux ppc64 version that wasn't ready as of 1.0 but should
be available in the next release.

> -- DarwinPPC/MacOS X 32-bit -- available as version 1.0.
> -- DarwinPPC/MacOS X 64-bit -- available as version 1.0.
>
> In addition, you're hoping that the port to Darwinx8664 will be relatively 
> straightforward (knock on wood).

I ordered a Mac Pro; it's supposed to arrive Tuesday.

If a few low-level things are straightforward (would really like a way
to make an otherwise unused segment register point at per-thread data,
the C calling sequence for x86-64 Darwin -looks- to be similar to the
Linux x86-64 ABI but doesn't seem to be documented yet, etc.), then I'd
hope that the higher-level parts to be straightforward.  (Famous last
words.)

>
> Do you have a sense of which versions are currently getting used the most?

I believe that about 80-90% of the downloads are of tthe 32-bit
DarwinPPC version; I'm not sure how that translates to use.

> How about which versions are paying customers most interested in?

Paying customers ?  We have paying customers ?  Why am I always the
last to know ?

>
> Is it still the case that the Darwin/MacOS X versions haven't been run under 
> Darwin?

I've never run anything under Darwin proper and have never heard of
anyone who has.

>
>
> Lastly, is the following documentation still accurate?
>

I believe so.

>
> 1.1 System Requirements
>
>
> 1.1.1 LinuxPPC
>
> OpenMCL runs under relatively recent versions of LinuxPPC. It requires 
> version 2.2.13 (or later) of the Linux kernel and version 2.1.3 (or later) of 
> the GNU C library (glibc) at a bare minimum.
>
> Unlike previous versions, OpenMCL 1.0 should run reliably under Linux 
> distributions that used Thread Local Storage ABI extensions in their C and/or 
> thread libraries; older OpenMCL versions may not run reliably when TLS is 
> involved. (Some distributions provided both non-TLS libraries and TLS-enabled 
> libraries, with an environment variable or other dynamic linker mechanism 
> which allows the default to be overridden. The details vary.)
>
> The trend in the Linux world is clearly towards TLS; in some future release, 
> OpenMCL may require TLS-based system libraries to run and a TLS-enabled 
> toolchain to build.
>
>
> 1.1.2 DarwinPPC/MacOS X
>
> OpenMCL was originally developed under MacOS X version 10.1; OpenMCL version 
> 0.14 and later depend on pthreads functionality introduced in OSX 10.2 
> ("Jaguar"). Most current development takes place under 10.3 and 10.4; there 
> may be some (relatively minor) advantages to assuming 10.3 or later, and that 
> change (dropping support for OSX 10.2) may happen in the near future.
>
> The 64-bit DarwinPPC version of OpenMCL requires functionality introduced in 
> OSX 10.4 (namely, the ability to run 64-bit binaries) and, obviously, a G5 
> processor.
>
> I haven't been able to do any preliminary testing under Darwin proper, but 
> OpenMCL doesn't intentionally use any MacOS X features beyond the Darwin 
> subset and therefore it seems likely that OpenMCL would run on PPC Darwin 
> versions that correspond to recent OSX versions.
>
>
> 1.1.3 Linuxx8664
>
> OpenMCL runs on relatively recent Linux distributions for the x86-64 (aka 
> amd64, aka x64) architecture. The OS and runtime features that it depends on 
> (Thread Local Storage support in the toolchain and standard libraries, the 
> New Posix Thread Library (NPTL) seem to be present in all current Linux 
> distributions for x86-64.
>
>