https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=102485
--- Comment #8 from Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail dot com> --- (In reply to Segher Boessenkool from comment #7) > > GCC already passes -m<cpu> to the assembler though. > > That mostly is historic. So? I was pointing out the compiler already tells the assembler what instruction set to use without the .machine directive. > > > The justification for emitting the .machine directive is given as fixing a > > build breakage due to a build system that passes an incorrect -m<cpu> to the > > assembler. > > Not really, no. That is really the justification for emitting the .machine directive as provided in the changelog of the commit which introduced the change. > That is just one tiny part of the problem. It is impossible > to know what instruction sets we need ahead of time, and -many cannot work > (and > *does not* work: there are quite a few mnemonics that encode to different > insns > on different architecture versions (or for different CPUs), and we cannot > know > which is wanted, or which is preferred, ahead of time. I understand the problems with -many, but it can and does work for real software. E.g., Linux kernel as of before this change. It's not -many I'm wedded to though, it's any ability to fix this sanely because of the .machine directive. The kernel should would change to using a specific CPU, e.g., -mcpu=power4 -Wa,-mpower10 and deal with the very rare few clashing mnemonics (e.g., tlbie) specially with the .machine directive when an older one is required. > > > *That* is the broken code (if any) that should have been fixed. But instead > > that is hacked around in a way that breaks working code that passes down > > -Wa,-many option as specified. > > There is no working code that uses -many (accept by accident, if no problem > has hit you yet). I'll reword. "Instead that is hacked around in a way that breaks working code that passes down the -Wa,-m<cpu> option as specified." > > > The kernel builds with a base compatibility (say -mcpu=power4) and then has > > certain code paths that are dynamically taken if running on newer CPUs which > > use newer instructions with inline asm. > > > > This is an important usage and it's pervasive, it seems unreasonable to > > break it. Adding .machine directives throughout inline asm for every > > instruction not in the base compatibility class is pretty horrible. > > It is the only correct thing to do. It's not. Not passing .machine and passing -mcpu is just as correct. With the added bonus that it allows software to use a superset of instructions in such cases. And even the great bonus that existing "broken" code that uses -many will continue to work. The correct way to deal with this is not to break this, it is to add a warning to -many for some period to binutils to give code a chance to migrate. I'm all for removing -many, and that is the right way to do it. By deprecating -many and providing warnings. Not by hacking around it in the compiler that breaks things.