Vector Facility for z/Architecture

[Fish-Git]

This issue was created for discussing development of the z/Architecture Vector Facility.

All discussion regarding this effort should take place HERE, in THIS GitHub Issue, and not in Issue #77, which is a generic GitHub Issue regarding all yet-to-be-developed z/Architecture facilities.

Please refrain from discussing z/Architecture Vector Facility development anywhere else, and discuss it here instead.

Thank you.

[Fish-Git]

My first approach was to use another area for VR and REFRESH/UPDATE from/to AFPR at every use. Then @Fish-Git proposed the shared area in POC SWAP128 (in this thread).

My development of instructions for zVector, involving bigendian storage, and the REFRESH/UPDATE mechanism. So I will absolutely have to change it.

Not necessarily! What I would like to do is determine which way -- yours or mine -- is more efficient. Thus I would be inclined to leave your current implementation as-is for the time being.

Implementing my shared registers proposal might be less efficient. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. I proposed it only because I thought (believed) it would be more efficient, but that remains to be seen!

I would prefer to see BOTH designs implemented (controlled via a temporary #define build option) so that we could then compare the performance of each one. It might well be that your current design is more efficient! I don't know! It might be. It might not be. It remains to be seen.

The idea here is I don't want to paint ourselves into a corner. I don't want to commit to one technique or the other until we know which one is best.

[Fish-Git]

... and I don't have access to a real mainframe to test some complex instructions.

That's something else we will need to eventually do too: verify the correctness of each implemented instruction on real hardware. I seem to recall that one of our developers (I forget who) has access to a real mainframe. We will eventually need to test/debug our implementation on a real machine.

Then, once verified, we will of course ALSO need to develop a QA (Quality Assurance) runtime test ("runtest" make check test) as well, to ensure any future changes don't break our implementation.

So there is definitely enough "meat" in this project for multiple people to bite off their own piece of it. The more people we have contributing the greater the chance of our succeeding in our effort.

[salva-rczero]

@Fish-Git I agree with the double implementation design.

@mcisho

Is this your understanding too?

Yes, this is how it was proposed, for byte size instructions it is not necessary or some logical operations (AND/OR), moves.... But in general you always have to be doing: BIG -> LIT -> BIG.

The FP registers contents in the regs structure are currently kept in the endianness of the host. If vector registers must be kept as big endian, then fp registers will also have to be kept as big endian. Which will have an impact on the design and usage of the shared area for vector/fp registers.

I think FP must continue with the current behaviour with regard to endianness. It will be easier to adapt zVector to the double treatment proposed by Fish.

p.s. Is you name Salva, am I addressing you correctly?

Yes! it's a common short name for Salvador.

Ian, tell me what you think!

Regards, salva.

[mcisho]

Can you please have a look at the attached proposal of the Hercules changes for shared zVector/FP registers. All comments. suggestions, etc are welcome.

• Shared-VR-and-FPR-proposal.txt

[Fish-Git]

Can you please have a look at the attached proposal of the Hercules changes for shared zVector/FP registers. All comments. suggestions, etc are welcome.

• Shared-VR-and-FPR-proposal.txt

Nice! I like it!

[mcisho]

Can you please have a look at the revised attached proposal of the Hercules changes for shared zVector/FP registers. I had forgotten we would need to move data between the instruction processors variables and the zVector registers preserving host endianness. Again, all comments. suggestions, etc are welcome:

• Shared-VR-and-FPR-proposal.txt

p.s. Fish, how did you add the bullet point before the link? I can't see it in the Github formatting syntax.

[Peter-J-Jansen]

I too am interested to participate in the Vector Facility and have read the proposal text with interest. So far I only have some probably very basic questions which I'm seeking an answer to:

1. Do I assume correctly that the current FPR registers are only ever used for floating point numbers, but that when overlaid with the VR registers they will, for certain VR instructions, also contain integers, i.e. non-floating point numbers?

2. Can anyone with more historical Hercules information perhaps offer some insight as to why the FPR instructions were implemented using the "softfloat" external package vs. using the host's IEEE 754 floating point support like available on e.g. X86-64 and ARM?

3. Is it the intention to keep using "softfloat" also for the VR instructions (instead of the host's IEEE 754 floating point support)?

4. If the answer to question #3 above is no, would there be any hope of using the host's SIMD instructions to implement (at least some of) the IBM VR instructions?

Thanks !

Cheers,

Peter

P.S.: I'll be off-line next week.

[salva-rczero]

@mcisho:   Can you explain to me why this line for LITTLE-ENDIAN?

int iv = ~(_v) & 0x1f;

[mcisho]

@salva-rczero:  Whoops, confusion on my part, taking little endian way too far! You are quite right, the register number does not need to be flipped. Well spotted.

@Peter-J-Jansen:

1. At any one instant the a 128-bit VR/FPR will contain either 128-bits of vector register data, or 64-bits of floating point data and 64-bits of unpredictable data. If an FPR instruction was the last thing to place a value into the VR/FPR, the VR/FPR will contain a floating point value. If a VR instruction was the last thing to place a value into the VR/FPR, the VR/FPR might contain a string, an integer value, a decimal value, or even a floating point value. I'm not clear whether the vector register elements have to be the same type, or even size.

2. I don't know.

3. I simply intend to change those statements that use regs->fpr to use regs->FPR_x, i.e Hercules will still use "softfloat".

4. I don't know what @salva-rczero plans for the future, or whether the hosts SIMD is part of those plans.

[mcisho]

Can you please have a look at the revised attached proposal of the Hercules changes for shared zVector/FP registers, with the corrections for the errors pointed out by @salva-rczero. Yet again, all comments. suggestions, etc are welcome.

• Shared-VR-and-FPR-proposal.txt

p.s. Fish, how did you add the bullet point before the link? I can't see it in the Github formatting syntax.

[salva-rczero]

@mcisho While I appreciate your effort, I really don't understand the need for all these macros. Currently the working code only need:

#define VR_B(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].B[(_i)]
#define VR_H(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].H[(_i)]
#define VR_F(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].F[(_i)]
#define VR_G(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].G[(_i)]

We would only need to add a lit-endian mode:

#define VR_B(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].B[(15-_i)]
#define VR_H(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].H[(7-_i)]
#define VR_F(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].F[(3-_i)]
#define VR_G(_v,_i)     regs->vr[(_v)].G[(1-_i)]

[salva-rczero]

@Peter-J-Jansen The first goal is to get it working, but yes, I have thought about using x86 SIMD for performance. In fact, a couple of Galois arithmetic instructions already use it.

[Fish-Git]

p.s. Fish, how did you add the bullet point before the link? I can't see it in the Github formatting syntax.

Asterisk or dash (minus sign) followed by a blank, which is the markdown code for an unordered list:

• one,
• two,
• buckle...
  • ...my...
  • ...shoe.

[Fish-Git]

2. Can anyone with more historical Hercules information perhaps offer some insight as to why the FPR instructions were implemented using the "SoftFloat" external package vs. using the host's IEEE 754 floating point support like available on e.g. X86-64 and ARM?

I believe Steve Orso (@srorso) would probably be the best person to answer this question, but as I recall, it was basically because of 2 things:

1. A compiler's IEEE 754 floating point instruction/hardware support did not behave the same way as what the architecture (Principles of Operation) required out-of-the-box. I believe it had mostly to do with rounding modes. In order to use the host CPU's IEEE 754 floating point hardware/instructions support, you would have to set the proper rounding mode beforehand, which might prove to be tricky.
   
   (Usually you define your desired rounding mode as a compiler option and the compiler uses/presumes that rounding mode for all instruction sequences that it generates. To change the rounding mode dynamically (at run time), one would have to insert hardware instructions to change the desired default rounding mode beforehand, which, as I said, might prove to be tricky when the compiler is the one deciding which FP instruction sequences to generate and in which order they are to be executed.)

2. I also seem to recall that IBM's Principles of Operation also defined several new non-standard rounding modes as well. That is to say, the formal specification of how IEEE 754 floating point was to behave (with respect to its defined rounding modes) either differed slightly from IBM's definition, and/or IBM defined in their architecture several new rounding modes that were not formally defined in the official IEEE 754 floating point specification.
   
   So, in order to support those new and/or different rounding modes, SoftFloat would be need to be used anyway, so why not just keep it simple and use SoftFloat for everything?

But those are just guesses. The truth is, I don't remember what the real reaso(s) was/were. Ask Steve. He might remember the details better than me since I believe he did a lot of work on our SoftFloat code.

[mcisho]

@mcisho While I appreciate your effort, I really don't understand the need for all these macros.

I proposed the macros as an aid for endianness, but if you think they are superfluous that's fine, I'll forget about them.

The most important thing is we all agree on how the shared VR/FPR are defined in REGS.

[mcisho]

Can you please have a look at the fourth and hopefully final revision of the proposal of the Hercules changes for shared zVector/FP registers. The superfluous stuff has been removed, and the suggestions from @salva-rczero have been incorporated. As always, all comments. suggestions, etc are welcome.

• Shared-VR-and-FPR-proposal-4.txt

[mcisho]

As it appears that no one disagrees with the proposal I will proceed. In the next few days I will branch the SDL-Hercules-390 hyperion develop branch into a branch named sharedvfp, where the changes to the floating-point instructions will be implemented.

The z/Architecture Principles of Operation says:

"Whenever a floating-point instruction or floating point support instruction writes to a floating point register, or a floating point instruction that reads a register pair reads from floating-point registers, bits 64-127 of the corresponding vector register are unpredictable.".

However, in a March 2015 presentation to SHARE titled "z13 Vector Extension Facility (SIMD)", IBM said:

"Be very aware that any use of a FPR will change all 16 bytes of the corresponding VR (this includes even LD)".

Empirical evidence from instructions executed on a z15 shows that use of a FPR changes bits 64-127 of the corresponding VR to zero.

So should Hercules set bits 64-127 of the corresponding VR to zero, or leave them unchanged (i.e. unpredictable), when an instruction writes to a FPR? Leaving the bits unchanged is simpler and less prone to coding error, but Hercules wouldn't be emulating the actions of real machines (or at least the machines to date).

[salva-rczero]

@mcisho Great!

As soon as you make the branch and push the changes to esa390.h and structs.h, I'll start changes to zvector.c for endianness independence.

On 64-127 bits, I would prefer to leave them unchanged. IMHO, Hercules should mimic z/Arch not real machines.

Regards, salva.

[Fish-Git]

So should Hercules set bits 64-127 of the corresponding VR to zero, or leave them unchanged (i.e. unpredictable), when an instruction writes to a FPR? Leaving the bits unchanged is simpler and less prone to coding error, but Hercules wouldn't be emulating the actions of real machines (or at least the machines to date).

I agree 100% with Salva. Hercules does not -- and indeed IMHO should not -- try to emulate any particular model of mainframe, whether manufactured by IBM or anyone else. It's sole responsibility is to only try to accurately emulate the published mainframe architecture as defined in the Principles of Operation.

The behavior of mainframes varies from model or model. The behavior of the architecture does not.

Stick to the architecture.

[mcisho]

The sharedvfp branch has been created, and the esa390.h and hstructs.h changes have been pushed.

Please note that the REGS structure still contains the old U32 fpr[32] variable. It will be removed when the numerous references to it have all been changed to the new shared QW vfp[32] variable.

[salva-rczero]

I've just created a pull request for the changes needed for vector instruccions (E7xx).

[salva-rczero]

@Fish-Git Will you provide the changes for U128, vfetch16, vstore16... from swap128 or should I do it myself?

Thanks in advance.

[Fish-Git]

Will you provide the changes for U128, vfetch16, vstore16... from swap128 or should I do it myself?

I will have to review my original implementation. What I originally coded might no longer be correct/appropriate for our current design. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I don't know. I'll have to brush off the dust and take a look at it.

If you want to do it, please feel free to do so! You might actually be able to do it faster than me. Personal issues have been affecting my ability to contribute as of late. (Don't worry, it's nothing serious.)

[mcisho]

The FP instructions using the shared zVR/FPR are complete, and the tests that we have pass. All of the changes have been committed to the sharedvpr branch.

[mcisho]

After several days of testing I haven't discovered any problem with FP instructions using the shared VR/FPR. I would like to pull the FP changes into the develop branch, so that the changes can be exposed to a wider range of environments than I have available. Does anyone object, feel it's premature, etc?

[Fish-Git]

Does anyone object, feel it's premature, etc?

No objection here! Sounds like a good plan to me!

[JamesWekel]

It's a bit early as I just tied a build on my Raspberry PI 5 (Armbian Jammy Linux) with Bill's Hercules-helper script. The build failed.

1. there were hundreds of warnings such as:

   
   CCLD     libhercu.la
   In file included from ../hstructs.h:61,
                from ../hercules.h:102,
                from ../cardpch.c:14:
   ../opcode.h:2091:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
   2091 | //    #define FPR2I(_r)     /* Convert fpr to index */                    \
     | ^
   ../opcode.h:2098:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
   2098 | //    #define FPREX         /* Offset of extended register */             \
     | ^
   ../opcode.h:2157:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
   2157 | //  #define REFRESH_READ_VR(_vr)                                          \
     | ^
   ../opcode.h:2166:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
   2166 | //  #define REFRESH_UPDATE_VR(_vr)    

2. undefined references to:

/usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference to z900_vector_multiply_and_add_high' /usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference toz900_vector_multiply_logical_high' /usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference to z900_vector_galois_field_multiply_sum_and_accumulate' /usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference toz900_vector_subtract_compute_borrow_indication' /usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference to z900_vector_subtract_with_borrow_indication' /usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference toz900_vector_shift_left' /usr/bin/ld: ./.libs/libherc.so: undefined reference to `z900_vector_select'

for every instruction in zvector.c. Missing an automake to update the makefile's?

What OS's have been tested?  Any big endian systems? Mac OS? 

My preference would be to continue with sharevfp to allow more development and more testing. [salva-rczero](https://github.com/salva-rczero)  provided the foundation for the E7 vector instructions. I've started on the E6 instructions.  

Jim

[Fish-Git]

Should be fixed now.

[JamesWekel]

Fish,

Hercules-helper builds the sharedvfp branch but still get a lot of warning messages.

The multi-line comment warnings are still issued; eg.

  CC       transact.lo
In file included from ../machdep.h:40,
                 from ../opcode.h:855,
                 from ../hstructs.h:61,
                 from ../hercules.h:102,
                 from ../trace.c:28:
../opcode.h:2092:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
 2092 | //    #define FPR2I(_r)     /* Convert fpr to index */                    \
      | ^
../opcode.h:2099:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
 2099 | //    #define FPREX         /* Offset of extended register */             \
      | ^
../opcode.h:2160:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
 2160 | //  #define REFRESH_READ_VR(_vr)                                          \
      | ^
../opcode.h:2169:1: warning: multi-line comment [-Wcomment]
 2169 | //  #define REFRESH_UPDATE_VR(_vr)                                        \
      | ^

and lots of new warnings from zvector.c.

In file included from ../zvector.c:2167:
../zvector.c: In function ‘z900_vector_load_element_8’:
../zvector.c:26:17: warning: variable ‘m3’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
   26 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |                 ^~
../zvector.c:26:13: warning: variable ‘v1’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
   26 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |             ^~
../zvector.c: In function ‘z900_vector_load_element_16’:
../zvector.c:43:17: warning: variable ‘m3’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
   43 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |                 ^~
../zvector.c:43:13: warning: variable ‘v1’ set `but` not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
   43 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |             ^~

As I'm using GCC on Linux, I've added

/* ============================================= */
/* TEMPORARY while zvector2.c is being developed */

#pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wunused-variable"
#pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wunused-but-set-variable"
#pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wcomment"

/* ============================================= */

to zvector.c and my zvector2.c (E6 vector instructions) to get rid of the some noise.

Jim

[Fish-Git]

As I'm using GCC on Linux

Stop using gcc, and use clang instead. gcc sucks.

[mcisho]

The pull from sharedvfp to develop has been done.

Before the pull feat900.h was changed to say

//efine FEATURE_129_ZVECTOR_FACILITY

so the zVector instructions are still not supported by the develop branch.

[pnoliveir]

Build this yesterday on Windows 10 and tried to boot z/OS 2.5 but wasn't successful. Got CPU spins when running Java (my installation runs several Java processes at IPL end). Ended upissuing stopall on Hercules console after getting tired of writing .0,abend to retry the operation. Still it fixed an issue with IMS also during IPL. Compiled with MS Studio 22 and with Bill Lewis' scripts. Machine is Windows 10, 2 E2667v4 CPUs, 256GB DDR4 RAM. Will try the develop branch (issuing FAC ENA 192 before IPL).

[salva-rczero]

@pnoliveir zvector facility is being developed as a proof of concept. For now, only the infrastructure is completed, but it does not execute any zVector instructions. In the next days, we will add some of them for testing, but far away from a stable execution and even less in a full z/OS.

[JamesWekel]

salva-rczero:

In htypes.h, you have defined U128 as: typedef __m128i U128; // unsigned 128-bits

but __m128i is only defined when Intel (X86_64) intrinsic definitions are included. They are included for MSVC and when Gcc/Clang recognizes X84_64 SSE2 is available.

Similarly, in inline.h, bswap_128 is defined as:

/*-------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Change endianness of a 128bits/16bytes integer                    */
/*-------------------------------------------------------------------*/
inline U128 bswap_128( U128 input )
{
    __m128i swapmask = _mm_set_epi8( 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 );
    __m128i swapped, work = input;
    _mm_storeu_si128( &swapped, _mm_shuffle_epi8( _mm_loadu_si128( &work ), swapmask ));
    return swapped;
}

but __m128i, _mm_set_epi8, etc, are not available on other CPU architectures such as ARM AArch64 (Raspberry PI, newer Macs, etc).

This brings up a whole other discussion of when/where intrinsic's are used for optimization (for later).

Jim

Addendum: Using hercules-helper to build the branch on a Raspberry PI 5, results in:

  CC       hdl.lo
In file included from ../hstdinc.h:312,
                 from ../cckdcdsk.c:13:
../htypes.h:112:10: error: unknown type name ‘__m128i’
  112 | typedef  __m128i    U128;       // unsigned 128-bits
      |          ^~~~~~~
make[2]: *** [Makefile:2621: cckdcdsk.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
In file included from ../hstdinc.h:312,
                 from ../hdl.c:10:
../htypes.h:112:10: error: unknown type name ‘__m128i’
  112 | typedef  __m128i    U128;       // unsigned 128-bits
      |          ^~~~~~~
In file included from ../hstdinc.h:312,
                 from ../codepage.c:9:
../htypes.h:112:10: error: unknown type name ‘__m128i’
  112 | typedef  __m128i    U128;       // unsigned 128-bits
      |          ^~~~~~~
In file included from ../hstdinc.h:312,
                 from ../hsys.c:8:
../htypes.h:112:10: error: unknown type name ‘__m128i’
  112 | typedef  __m128i    U128;       // unsigned 128-bits
      |          ^~~~~~~

[Fish-Git]

but __m128i, _mm_set_epi8, etc, are not available on other CPU architectures such as ARM AArch64 (Raspberry PI, newer Macs, etc).

Quite right. That is something that will need to eventually be fixed.

This brings up a whole other discussion of when/where intrinsic's are used for optimization (for later).

Agreed. Maintaining Hercules's portability is indeed a challenge.

[salva-rczero]

I also agree, the first goal should be the emulation and not performance. I will change m128i to a compatible type and leave the mm* functions as an alternative when SSEx__ is available, to others of direct implementation in c.

Most of the instructions are implemented in c using loops for the vector elements and do not use SIMD, except for two of Galois arithmetic that I will have to investigate how to implement in plain c.

Regards, salva.

[salva-rczero]

@JamesWekel Jim, can you please clone https://github.com/salva-rczero/hyperion-sharedvfp.git and try to compile for ARM, Raspberry, Mac or any other cpu.

Thanks!

[JamesWekel]

Salva,

Using Bill's hercules-helper for your https://github.com/salva-rczero/hyperion-sharedvfp.git repository, the build was successful. There were lots of warnings, such as:

../zvector.c: In function ‘z900_vector_load’:
../zvector.c:184:17: warning: variable ‘m3’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
  184 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |                 ^~
../zvector.c: In function ‘z900_vector_store’:
../zvector.c:314:17: warning: variable ‘m3’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
  314 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |                 ^~
../zvector.c: In function ‘z900_vector_load_multiple’:
../zvector.c:620:25: warning: variable ‘m4’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
  620 |     int     v1, v3, b2, m4, i;
      |                         ^~

To cut down on some noise during my development, I've added the following to at the top of your zverctor.c and my zvector2.c files:

/* ============================================= */
/* TEMPORARY while zvector2.c is being developed */
#if defined(__GNUC__)
    #pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wunused-variable"
    #pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wunused-but-set-variable"
    #pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wcomment"
#endif
/* ============================================= */ 

I'll be offline until late tomorrow.

Jim

[salva-rczero]

Great! thanks.

[Fish-Git]

There were lots of warnings, such as:

../zvector.c: In function ‘z900_vector_load’:
../zvector.c:184:17: warning: variable ‘m3’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
  184 |     int     v1, m3, x2, b2;
      |                 ^~

If you attach the complete list, I'm sure we could get them fixed.

Also, as I hope you are aware, such warnings do not occur when clang is used instead of gcc.

[wrljet]

Fish, you aren't really ready to just state that gcc is not supported, are you?

[Fish-Git]

Fish, you aren't really ready to just state that gcc is not supported, are you?

No. Just that it's an inferior product.

[wrljet]

Most of the planet runs on gcc compiled code.

[Fish-Git]

Most of the planet runs on gcc compiled code.

Do you really want to do this??  :)

[wrljet]

I don't want to do anything. But Hercules should continue to build and run from gcc.

[Fish-Git]

I meant argue with me regarding the quality of gcc, given that you know how I feel about the product. I'm not saying we should drop support for gcc. Just that IMHO it's far too "chatty". It throws warnings for every little itty bitty thing -- even things which IMHO do not merit a waning -- which IMHO can be not only be extremely annoying but also an impediment to development given the desire to have a product that builds with no warnings or errors thereby triggering unnecessary coding changes just to silence them.

[wrljet]

@JamesWekel Jim, can you please clone https://github.com/salva-rczero/hyperion-sharedvfp.git and try to compile for ARM, Raspberry, Mac or any other cpu.

Thanks!

Which of "yous guy" have Raspberry Pi(s) or Macs?

[wrljet]

Fish,

I meant argue with me regarding the quality of gcc, given that you know how I feel about the product. I'm not saying we should drop support for gcc. Just that IMHO it's far too "chatty". It throws warnings for every little itty bitty thing -- even things which IMHO do not merit a waning -- which IMHO can be not only be extremely annoying but also an impediment to development given the desire to have a product that builds with no warnings or errors thereby triggering unnecessary coding changes just to silence them.

No, I don't need to argue with you. gcc speaks for itself. :-)

That doesn't mean that gcc isn't still the standard compiler on most *nix systems. And we need to support it one-way-or-the-other, as much as it pisses us off.

Bill

[Fish-Git]

And we need to support it one-way-or-the-other, as much as it pisses us off.

Agreed 100%. But there's nothing wrong with encouraging others to use a more superior product than gcc when it comes to building Hercules, is there? I mean, Hercules does not require that it be built using gcc, right? It can be built just as well with clang, yes? So that's all I was doing. I was pointing out the fact that if these annoying warnings that gcc was throwing was bothering the person, then they should at least consider switching to using clang! There's nothing wrong with that! Right?

[wrljet]

Yes, right, correct.