This means that floating-point constants can now have the range and precision of the extended type (aka long double), and floating-point constant expressions evaluated within the compiler also have that same range and precision (matching expressions evaluated at run time). This new behavior is intended to match the behavior specified in the C99 and later standards for FLT_EVAL_METHOD 2.
This fixes the previous problem where long double constants and constant expressions of type long double were not represented and evaluated with the full range and precision that they should be. It also gives extra range and precision to constants and constant expressions of type double or float. This may have pluses and minuses, but at any rate it is consistent with the existing behavior for expressions evaluated at run time, and with one of the possible models of floating point evaluation specified in the C standards.
The code of PeepHoleOptimization is now big enough that it triggers bogus "Relative address out of range" range errors from the linker. This is a linker bug and should be fixed there.
Stephen Heumann
mikew50