Re: ppc vs. gcc48 - switching from PPC EABI to PPC SVR4/TLS ABI

Matt Thomas <[email protected]> Fri, 21 Nov 2014 20:25:27 -0800
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.ports.powerpc
Message-ID <[email protected]>
> On Nov 21, 2014, at 8:24 AM, Frank Wille <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Chuck Silvers wrote:
> 
>> supporting TLS on powerpc actually involved switching from the PPC
>> EABI (embedded ABI) (which uses the R2 register for small data items)
>> to the PPC SVR4 ABI (which uses the R2 register for the TLS private
>> pointer).
> 
> May I ask which kind of programs use EABI? I was under the impression that
> the kernel and userland for all powerpc ports have always been compiled
> using the SVR4 ABI.

It was an option before pthreads.  But it was rarely, if ever, used.