title: Soft Float on x86_64
body: <p>I work on software for an embedded system which does not have an FPU. I would like to be able to build this software with a software floating point library on my desktop in order to get a more realistic view of performance. Does anyone have any ideas about how to achieve this?</p>
  
  <p>Thus far I have not made much progress with using <code>-msoft-float</code> with gcc. I am currently looking at using clang. By using the flags <code>-Xclang -msoft-float -Xclang -no-implicit-float</code> and specifying a library which has implementations of soft-float routines, I am able to get my application to compile. When I try to run it, it always segfaults. As best I can tell, this is because the libraries on which this program depends were not compiled with soft-float. The app depends on gtk, sqlite, expat, gcrypt, a number of internal libraries, and libc.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to try to figure out how to build a complete build environment with soft-float support. I tried uclibc's buildroot and setting <code>CC</code> and <code>CXX</code> to clang's binaries, but this did not work due to the requirements for compiling the gcc toolchain (things such as autotools complaining about the compiler version being incorrect). Since I would like to use clang as the compiler in the new buildroot (in order to have soft-float support), I don't see a pressing need to build gcc. Is it possible to do this without gcc?</p>