RE: [Gcl-devel] trying to finalize the windows issues ...

[Mike Thomas]

Hi there.

| 1) I thought we still had problems with >=3.3.3 vs. 3.3.1, no?  In
|    general, I'm afraid I'm a bit behind on the latest status and could
|    really use a complete summary of known bugs.

Putting aside gcc 3.4.0 for now (as it is the pending release I had hoped it
might solve problems for us but, really, I think the problem is GCL rather
than the compiler), there are three GCL runtime bugs for which I am
consciously seeking causes:

1.  "Maxima ignore-errors" - does not have effect with Maxima unless the
source in defsystem.lisp is deliberately altered to give it effect, of
course,

2.  "ANSI test universe.lsp load" - this results at high optimisation
levels.

3.  Instability in the ANSI tester.

Various builds (different combinations of compiler optimisation and various
patches such as your recent patches + the stack hack set out below) exhibit
one or more of these problems.  For a given patch, changing the compiler
optimisation results in swapping about of the particular bug being
expressed.

Another patch which I have found stops the ignore-errors bug (with CVS
default optimisation flags) is to insert a vs_reset just before the final
return after the "vs_popp()" in "string.d", the function
"coerce_to_string()".  Unfortunately this then gives the "universe.lsp" bug
and changes in optimisation settings reverses the problem.

Likewise you may recall my optimism recently over patching one of the
"pathname.d" functions to (in theory) switch off interrupts or some such.


|
| 2) Having a build fail with an extended stack should give us a clue?
|    How are you extending the stack, and how does it fail?

In configure.in:

TCFLAGS="-Wl,--stack=8388608 -Wall -DVOL=volatile -fsigned-char"

and a similar linker directive in unixport/Makefile when building the raw_*
executable.

In o/main.c:

            _stacktop    = _stackbottom - 8388608; // ???

The number 8388608 = 1024x1024x8.

This method is messy as all Lisp compile commands spew a warning about the
resulting unused linker script.

Cheers

Mike Thomas.