char / short locals in MIPS big-endian about smallerc HOT 2 CLOSED

I located the cause of the issue in smlrc.c:

if (!isStruct)
{
   // This is a special case for initialization of integers smaller than int.
   // Since a local integer variable always takes as much space as a whole int,
   // we can optimize code generation a bit by storing the initializer as an int.
   // This is an old accidental optimization and I preserve it for now.
   // Note, this implies a little-endian CPU.
   stack[sp - 1][1] = SizeOfWord;
}

It may be worth considering a BIG_ENDIAN define or some official way to disable this optimization. Or consider ifndef MIPS around this.

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Yes, that's the place responsible for word-sized initialization of locals.
Off the top of my head, I don't know what else may be broken for big endian CPUs.
There has never been a goal to support big endian CPUs and I should at last document it explicitly.

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