Re: [MiNT] math.h

[Vincent Rivière <vincent.riviere@freesbee.fr>]

Miro Kropacek wrote:
> Only one note: as far as I remember, since we're still using that a.out 
> format even for object files, does not this implies the size of libc.a 
> will grow no matter if the user uses 1/10 or that math lib or 1/2? The 
> final binary of simple hello world is quite huge even in the present.

There is no problem.

The only point to care about with a.out is to define only one function 
in a .c file (or several interdependent functions). This is because a .o 
file is either fully linked, either not linked at all. So if there are 
unused functions in a .c, they will take useless space in the final 
executable, and even worse, it will be recursively the same for the 
dependencies of the unused functions.

The rule is: for each externally visible function in a .c, the whole 
contents of the .c file must be useful. If some other functions are 
unrelated, they should go into another .c file.

If libc.a becomes bigger and bigger, there will be no problem, because 
only the required .o files will be linked in the executable. We just 
have to be careful about function dependencies, in order to avoid 
embedding a lot of stuff in the final executable.

About the idea of merging fdlibm into the MiNTLib, I guess that Alan 
wants to merge the fdlibm sources into the MiNTLib source package. The 
MiNTLib sources currently produces libc.a, libiio.a, librpcsvc.a. After 
the merge, it will produce libm.a, too. The idea is to have only one 
source package instead of two. There will be no change for the MiNTLib 
users.

--
Vincent Rivière