For anyone that would like to help with porting to Windows, here are the notes so far:
* The asm jit we use mentions MSVC support on its website, though it only explicitly mentions MSVC 2003. I don't see any VS solution files, so I don't know how the build is managed (they use CMake). * Bear in mind that supporting anything other than the assembly formats currently supported is a massive task. Alex has spent months adapting it to work with our assembly code, though it does read quite a bit of our yasm code and a lot of gas format assembly. It currently outputs gas format. It can output Intel syntax (we are not sure what variety), but that part contains some bugs (incorrect output). * The superoptimiser itself is written in C++11, and Alex says he doesn't use many longs in his code. * Currently there is code that is Linux specific for fixing the CPU affinity. That would need porting. * Until today we were having a lot of problems on Intel CPUs on any OS. AMD is more stable though still not perfect. * We have not tested again on a fully loaded system. We are trying that now, after the most recent changes. We previously had problems on loaded systems. * As mentioned, we do not believe timings will be consistent enough on Windows to be able to superoptimise, but people are welcome to try and figure out how to make it work there. At the least it is going to require someone with a lot of Windows experience to solve that, if it is actually possible. * The total amount of code asm jit + optimiser is about 32,000 lines of code, but currently the code is in a state of flux, day-to-day * Alex does not have experience developing on Windows and does not have access to a Windows machine and he is on contract to the OpenDreamKit project, so he is not available to assist in the development of a Windows port, other than to answer occasional questions by email. * Alex is currently happy to give people access to the repository on request (if you have a GitHub account), but please understand that the project is not in a stable state just yet. Bill. On 12 May 2016 at 17:08, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> wrote: > I am just going to state the same thing again: we do not currently believe > the superoptimiser will work on Windows, even if it is ported. People are > obviously welcome to try. > > As always, we are limited by our resources and by the nature of the > problem itself, not by our willingness to do this or that. I welcome > volunteers to contribute whether on Windows or any other system. > > So far we have a couple of serious applicants for the six month position > to replace Alex. I simply don't know if we will be lucky and hire someone > with Windows development experience. I don't personally have any other > resources I can direct towards MPIR at present. Volunteers welcome! > > Bill. > > On 12 May 2016 at 16:36, degski <deg...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 12 May 2016 at 16:51, Brian Gladman <b...@gladman.plus.com> wrote: >> >> That seems more than a little lukewarm to me and says, in effect, we >>> don't much care whether you do this or not. >>> >> >> >>> Am I reading too much into your reluctance to comment on whether 'MPIR >>> on Windows x64 has a future'? >> >> >> I've been following MPIR since its inception. As I understood it from the >> start, the purpose of MPIR was to provide GMP (a drop-in replacement and) >> performance on Windows platforms. This at the time our Swedish friend was >> getting ever more reluctant to make any concessions from his "Linux is the >> best stance" to accomodate a performant GMP on Windows/VC. I lost it (the >> way MPIR was heading) by the time Linux seemed to be taking over as a >> focus. I think I'm correct if I say that we can safely leave good >> number-crunching on Linux to the Swedes with confidence. They do a (very) >> good job. GMP is integrated into GCC/G++ nowadays. Trying to replicate that >> (be a me-too) seems futile to me. >> >> Brian, you have my support, but I'm not clever enough to contribute >> un-fortunately :-( >> >> degski >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "mpir-devel" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to mpir-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to mpir-devel@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mpir-devel. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mpir-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mpir-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to mpir-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mpir-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
