The libbase changes

Introduction

On m68k amiga the A6 register was used for the pointer to the base address of a library structure. This A6 register was also not used for other code so anywhere in the code of a library you could access the libbase through this register without explicitly passing it to the function as a function argument.
The first i386 ABI put the libbase on the stack as last argument to the function. This approach has some disadvantages:
The goal for the ABI and the libbase would also to be compatible with other compilers then gcc; for example the vbcc compiler.
Another goal should be to make it very easy to port of external libraries to AROS.

Implementation

The current implementation in the ABI V1 branch (trunk/branches/ABI_V1) uses the %ebx register to pass the libbase to the library function. This register is also reserved for base relative addressing. As this register is currently reserved and not used by code generated by the compiler you could access it everywhere in the library code.
AROS_GET_LIBBASE and AROS_SET_LIBBASE macros are defined to be able to access the libbase. These are by default defined as resp AROS_GET_RELBASE and AROS_SET_RELBASE when they are not provided by the cpu.h include file for the cpu.
When no cpu specific versions of the AROS_L[HCPD] macros are defined, default versions are defined in aros/libcall.h that will use the AROS_GET_LIBBASE and AROS_SET_LIBBASE macros for passing the library base to the functions of a library.

Other solutions