Re: What version of GMP should we require?

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Mark,

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:

> I recently noticed that scm_i_big2dbl contains some crufty and
> inefficient compatibility code to work around unspecified rounding
> behavior of mpz_get_d in GMP prior to version 4.2.  GMP 4.2 was released
> in March 2006 and has been in Debian since sarge (now oldstable).
>
> How would you feel about making Guile 2.0.x require GMP 4.2 or later?

I like the suggestion, but I’m uncomfortable with making this change in 2.0.

> I was hoping to apply these changes to the 2.0 branch, but
> exact-integer-root and the enhancements to expt depend on mpz_rootrem,
> which was introduced in GMP 4.2.  I could reimplement its functionality
> if needed, but the result would surely be somewhat slower.

For 2.0, what about AC_CHECK_LIB ‘mpz_rootrem’, and provide a
replacement when it’s not available?  It doesn’t really matter if the
replacement is slower since less and less people will need it, but
still, that would allow us to not break people’s expectations regarding
compatibility.

In ‘master’ you can of course require 4.2 and clean things up as you see
fit.  :-)

How would that work for you?

Thanks,
Ludo’.