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move -mcpu to be part of the target triple #4584

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@andrewrk

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@andrewrk

This is a follow-up issue from #4550.

std.zig.CrossTarget has the ability to represent CPU features, as well as std.Target.

Curently, "parsing" a target triple also wants to know the CPU model name and feature set at the same time, in order to produce a target. So this is a proposal to merge the concepts together. It mainly involves the CLI.

The proposal is to change this (example):

-target arm-linux-gnu -mcpu=generic+v8a-neon

to this:

-target arm.generic+v8a~neon-linux-gnu

The main idea here is that -mcpu is deleted as a command line parameter, and -target gains even more expressiveness.

This works by replacing - with ~, because - is a field separator in the -target command line parameter. This would not affect the #3089 CLI which would have -mcpu to match C compilers. Note that ~ means "binary not" in many contexts, which would be a reasonable mnemonic to remember the syntax by.

The main area where this would be helpful would be the Zig build system, because standardTargetOptions would only need to be concerned with -Dtarget rather than -Dtarget and -Dmcpu. The fact that CPU features are part of both std.Target and std.zig.CrossTarget is a strong hint that this data belongs together.

As another example, std.zig.CrossTarget.parse wants to know the -mcpu parameter in order to produce a result:

pub const ParseOptions = struct {
/// This is sometimes called a "triple". It looks roughly like this:
/// riscv64-linux-musl
/// The fields are, respectively:
/// * CPU Architecture
/// * Operating System (and optional version range)
/// * C ABI (optional, with optional glibc version)
/// The string "native" can be used for CPU architecture as well as Operating System.
/// If the CPU Architecture is specified as "native", then the Operating System and C ABI may be omitted.
arch_os_abi: []const u8 = "native",
/// Looks like "name+a+b-c-d+e", where "name" is a CPU Model name, "a", "b", and "e"
/// are examples of CPU features to add to the set, and "c" and "d" are examples of CPU features
/// to remove from the set.
/// The following special strings are recognized for CPU Model name:
/// * "baseline" - The "default" set of CPU features for cross-compiling. A conservative set
/// of features that is expected to be supported on most available hardware.
/// * "native" - The native CPU model is to be detected when compiling.
/// If this field is not provided (`null`), then the value will depend on the
/// parsed CPU Architecture. If native, then this will be "native". Otherwise, it will be "baseline".
cpu_features: ?[]const u8 = null,
/// Absolute path to dynamic linker, to override the default, which is either a natively
/// detected path, or a standard path.
dynamic_linker: ?[]const u8 = null,
/// If this is provided, the function will populate some information about parsing failures,
/// so that user-friendly error messages can be delivered.
diagnostics: ?*Diagnostics = null,
pub const Diagnostics = struct {
/// If the architecture was determined, this will be populated.
arch: ?Target.Cpu.Arch = null,
/// If the OS name was determined, this will be populated.
os_name: ?[]const u8 = null,
/// If the OS tag was determined, this will be populated.
os_tag: ?Target.Os.Tag = null,
/// If the ABI was determined, this will be populated.
abi: ?Target.Abi = null,
/// If the CPU name was determined, this will be populated.
cpu_name: ?[]const u8 = null,
/// If error.UnknownCpuFeature is returned, this will be populated.
unknown_feature_name: ?[]const u8 = null,
};
};
pub fn parse(args: ParseOptions) !CrossTarget {

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acceptedThis proposal is planned.breakingImplementing this issue could cause existing code to no longer compile or have different behavior.proposalThis issue suggests modifications. If it also has the "accepted" label then it is planned.standard libraryThis issue involves writing Zig code for the standard library.

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