Re: [boost] [atomic] unconditional cmpxchg8b support

Subject: Re: [boost] [atomic] unconditional cmpxchg8b support
From: Helge Bahmann (hcb_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-10-23 07:58:25

On Tue, 23 Oct 2012, Tim Blechmann wrote:

>>> imo, all ia32 machines without cmpxchg8b should belong to a museum, and
>>> we could introduce a macro like BOOST_ATOMIC_NO_CMPXCHG8B if we really
>>> care of compiling for any of those machines.
>>>
>>> thoughts?
>>
>> I think the library should be fair and compile for the platform it is
>> requested for. The question of the default target platform should be
>> directed to compiler or Debian dev team.
>
> in theory i'd agree with you, but i doubt that it is easy to convince
> the debian devs to change their defaults ... and then we (well i) may
> still have problems with other linux distributions, maybe mingw/cygwin ...

I guess that you will have a difficult time convincing them, as such 
things are preferentially handled at run-time (ld-linux hwcaps being 
prefered probably). That's certainly doable in boost.atomic (except for 
the hwcaps part, would have to use cpuid directly, probably).

Cheers,
Helge