mozilla's install hanging on amd64

[Roman Neuhauser]

# scottl at samsco.org / 2005-04-11 10:34:48 -0600:
> Mikhail Teterin wrote:
> >My whole point, Scott, is that there is nothing special about "my gcc 
> >flags". NOTHING. Setting CPUTYPE to match one's processor flavor is a 
> >long-documented way to do things -- fact. Such setting results in the 
> >corresponding -march=XXX automatically -- fact. All ports must handle 
> >this. Those that can not are broken. Plan and simple. There is nothing to 
> >argue: `-O -pipe -march=opteron' must work.

    (...)

> Is my car broken because it can't go 300km/hr?  A Porshe can, so 
> shouldn't mine be able to?  My point here is that there is a distinction
> between the mozilla port being completely broken, and being broken in
> non-standard or specific configurations.  Saying that it's BROKEN
> implies that it's 100% unusable, and that gives a false summary of the
> problem.  I built it from scratch with a very stock, unmodified system
> and it works as well for me as I would expect.  In my eyes, it's not
> broken.  But I don't play with custom gcc options.
> 
> I'll readily concede that there are a lot of ports that are authored
> in an i386-specific way and only work on amd64 by sheer luck. 
> Understnad that FreeBSD tends to also be at the leading edge of compiler
> development.  While we are using GCC 3.4, many other BSD and Linux 
> variants are still using 3.1, 3.2, or even 2.95.  So it's quite possible
> that the newer compiler has either bugs or stricter languange 
> compliance, and there aren't enough eyes yet to discover and fix these 
> problems.  Shouting to everyone that mozilla is BROKEN doesn't help this
> very much.

    I think this thread shows that there is a need for a written policy
    on -march / -mcpu / -mtune gcc options in ports. Heated discussions
    like this one could be avoided if the Porters Handbook included an
    article or chapter on this.

    Whether that policy was "-march= must work" or "-march= is
    unsupported" or "ports should filter out -march= if they break with
    it, patches for -march-related bugs welcome" (most reasonable
    IMNSHO) would be a matter of consensus, but would be a boon to have.

    MFT set to ports@ and doc at .

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