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The short float repr() that's in 3.1 (probably) doesn't work on 
Solaris/x86 when using Sun's compiler to build. It would be nice to
fix this.
It probably works on Solaris/x86/gcc, though confirmation of that would be 
appreciated.
Marking as easy, because this should be an easy task for someone who has 
access to the appropriate setup. I can probably do all the 
autoconf/define stuff required, but I need help from someone who has 
access to Solaris/x86 and who can be available to do testing.

See the comments in the Include/pyport.h file for an explanation of
what's required. (Search for HAVE_PY_SET_53BIT_PRECISION.)

There are some related comments in issue #7281.

I can confirm that short float repr() is active and all float tests are
passed on this combination:
Ubuntu64bit -> KVM -> OpenSolaris32bit/Python3.2/gcc

Stefan Krah mentions in the issue 7281 discussion that suncc supports
the C99 fenv functions. I'm not sure how to use these to set the x87
precision, though. (Setting the rounding mode is straightforward.)

I see two alternatives:
(1) Use fesetenv. I don't know what the appropriate value to pass would
be though, or even whether solaris lets you use fesetenv to control the
x87 precision. It seems that its primary purpose is to set flags and traps.
(2) Use inline assembly, assuming that suncc supports this. This seems
simpler. It's just a matter of figuring out the syntax that suncc
expects for asm, and making sure the code is properly tested.

Looking at:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5172/fesetenv-3m
it seems that fesetenv isn't what we want here. It 'only installs the
state of the floating-point status flags represented through its argument'.

Stefan, is it possible that suncc already accepts the assembler syntax
used in Python/pymath.h (py3k or trunk) for the functions
_Py_get_387controlword and _Py_set_387controlword?

The inline asm compiles, but I don't know how good the GNU inline asm
support is with suncc in general. I'm not a heavy user of suncc, I just
use it for testing.
That said, perhaps fesetprec works, too:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5172/fesetprec-3m 

Excellent! From a bit of searching, it looks as though this assembler
syntax works on icc as well, which is very good news.
Thanks for finding fesetprec as well. It's a shame this isn't standard
C. Oh well; maybe for C201X. I think I'd prefer to stick with the
inline assembly, since it seems that there's very little to do to make
this just work.
Next problem: when compiling with suncc, how do I detect (in the
configure script)
(1) that I'm using suncc, and
(2) whether the hardware is x86 or not (preferably excluding the case of
x86-64).
For gcc, configure.in is using:
if test -n "`$CC -dM -E - </dev/null | grep i386`"
to detect whether we're on x86. I guess it's too much to hope for that
this works for suncc as well.

fesetprec and fegetprec are at least semi-standard, it seems. They're
recommended in the C99 rationale (see page 121 of
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/C99RationaleV5.10.pdf
).

If gcc and suncc are present, ./configure chooses gcc and everything is
fine.
If only suncc is present, it's detected as cc. These tests should be
possible:
stefan@opensolaris:~/svn/py3k$ cc -V
cc: Sun C 5.9 SunOS_i386 Patch 124868-07 2008年10月07日
usage: cc [ options] files. Use 'cc -flags' for details
stefan@opensolaris:~/svn/py3k$ if cc -V 2>&1 | grep -q 'SunOS_i386';
then echo yes; fi
yes
stefan@opensolaris:~/svn/py3k$ uname -a
SunOS opensolaris 5.11 snv_101b i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris
stefan@opensolaris:~/svn/py3k$ if uname -a | grep -q i386; then echo yes; fi
yes

Thanks. uname looks like the way to go, then.
Is your copy of OpenSolaris running in 32-bit mode or 64-bit mode? Does
the mode make a difference to the output of uname, or is uname -p always
i386, regardless of the mode?
I think the configure test for the inline assembly should go ahead on
both x86 and x86-64: it seems likely that a 64-bit OS would be using
SSE2 instructions for floating-point (which would make setting and
getting the x87 control word unnecessary) instead of the x87 FPU, but I
don't know that for sure.
Actually, I guess I could just make that configure test unconditional.
It'll fail on non-x86 hardware, but that's no big deal.

Stefan, please could you test the attached patch (against py3k) with
suncc? With this patch, sys.float_repr_style should report 'short', and
'make test' should not produce any obviously float-related failures.

My copy is 32-bit. I never installed a 64-bit version, but I strongly
assume that uname -p gives x86_64. BTW, uname -p works on Solaris, but
returns 'unknown' on my 64 bit Linux.

Tested the patch against an updated 3.2. repr-style is 'short', and I
did not see obvious float errors. In particular, test_float.py is
passed. I also did not see new compile warnings.
As for the other tests, the errors I get seem to be the same with or
without the patch. Any other tests I should watch out for apart from
test_float.py?

Many thanks for testing this, Stefan! I'll tidy up the patch a little bit 
and add a Misc/NEWS entry, then commit this.

> As for the other tests, the errors I get seem to be the same with or
> without the patch. Any other tests I should watch out for apart from
> test_float.py?
Well *ideally* you shouldn't be getting any test failures :-). But I 
could imagine than running Solaris within a VM might cause some 
problems. Which tests are failing?
Tests I'd be worried about for the float repr change include: 
test_float, test_complex, test_math, test_cmath, test_ast, test_format, 
test_marshal, test_pickle, test_json, test_builtin, test_capi.

The tests that you mention run o.k., except capi, but that looks harmless:
stefan@opensolaris:~/svn/py3k/Lib/test# ../../python test_capi.py
test_instancemethod (__main__.CAPITest) ... ok
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.000s
OK
internal test_L_code
internal test_Z_code
internal test_capsule
internalTraceback (most recent call last):
 File "test_capi.py", line 170, in <module>
 test_main()
 File "test_capi.py", line 130, in test_main
 print("internal", name)
ImportError: No module named _curses
Tests that fail:
test_ascii_formatd, test_calendar, test_datetime, test_distutils,
test_email, test_httpservers, test_mailbox, test_multiprocessing,
test_os, test_pipes, test_platform, test_poll, test_popen, test_pty,
test_pydoc, test_quopri, test_select, test_signal, test_strftime,
test_strptime, test_subprocess, test_sys, test_tempfile, test_threading
A lot of these fail either due to the inability to allocate resources or
the fact that strftime appears to give weird results.

Is the test_ascii_formatd failure due to a failed 'from ctypes import 
...'? That's the only failure that looks like it could be related.
Thanks for this.

Yes, test_ascii_formatd fails with 'ImportError: No module named _ctypes'.

Committed in r76300 (trunk) and r76301 (py3k). Thanks for all your help, 
Stefan.