Re: Bug on HPs

[Rick Riolo]

Roger,
Thanks for working on it.
When you have your builtin_apply exerciser,
and what it exercised on HPs, let me know and I'll
be glad to give it a whirl.
  - r

Rick Riolo                       address@hidden
Program for Study of Complex Systems (PSCS)
1061 Randall Lab     University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
http://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/rlr-home.html

On Sat, 27 Jul 1996, Roger Burkhart wrote:

> Date: Sat, 27 Jul 96 14:53:59 MDT
> From: Roger Burkhart <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: Bug on HPs
> 
> In response to Rick Riolo's question on the HP probe bug:
> 
> > Hi Manor (&others),
> > Any progress on this bug?  
> >   - r
> 
> We're very concerned about this, not only because it's serious in
> its own right ...
> 
> > It is a serious bug for teaching-Swarm
> > (amoung other things).   I was hoping to at least
> > demo swarm in the week of 5-10 August to a summer
> > school class, so if we could get this fixed 
> > soon that would be great.  if not, I understand,
> > I've had to track down elusive bugs myself now
> > and again (not bugs I created, of course ;-)
> 
> ... but because Manor has isolated the bug down to gcc's _builtin_apply
> function as used by tclobjc, so it's out of our code altogether.
> 
> We've had enough difficulties with gcc's _builtin_apply extension to C
> (which provides an essential capability for both us and the tclobjc
> library to dynamically construct function calls) that we've decided
> we'll have to attack it full-on and build our own generic interface to
> _builtin_apply.  We'll use this interface to exercise _builtin_apply as
> thoroughly as possible with different argument and return types on every
> machine type.  Then we'll be able to reproduce any such bugs outside of
> Swarm, and then either find our work-arounds or get them fixed directly
> in gcc or both.  Our concern is not only with HP where things still mostly
> work, but with IBM RS/6000 where none of this has ever worked (which is
> why we don't currently run there).
> 
> I'm starting to work on this myself but with other travel by both
> Manor and me we aren't likely to get a fix implemented in time for
> your class.  But it is a serious bug right at the heart of our generic
> probe machinery.  We'll be working hard to get it fixed whereever
> we can, and we hope that'll eventually be directly in gcc where we
> currently think the fix is needed.
> 
> Roger Burkhart
>