Bug#365203: rootskel: Please support the ppc64 architecture

[Andreas Jochens <aj@andaco.de>]

Hello,

On 06-May-01 19:23, Geert Stappers wrote:
> On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 09:49:03AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Notice that once we are going multi-arch (probably not for etch though), the
> > 64bit architecture will be called powerpc64, and not ppc64. The ppc64 effort
> > is a different thing, a one-man effort by Andreas Jochens mostly, who rebuilt
> > everything in a pure-64 way, and has been sending out bug reports asking for
> > ppc64 support since a long time now.
> 
> 
> Can the efforts of ppc64 and powerpc64 be combined?
> Where and _why_ differ ppc64 and power64???

The ppc64 port is a separate new port with a full 64-bit userland for 
PPC64 machines. This is comparable with the amd64/i386 situation
where amd64 is also a separate new port with a full 64-bit userland.

In contrast to this native 64-bit approach, Sven Luther has done a lot 
of work to make changes to the 32-bit powerpc port which allow it to 
install some 64-bit components in addition to the 32-bit userland.
He has achived quite a lot: the powerpc port now has working 64-bit 
kernels and a working biarch toolchain, i.e. 64-bit support in gcc
and glibc.

However, for my own purposes I need a full set of 64-bit libraries
which is currently provided by the native ppc64 port only.

I had some discussions with Sven about this which may be summarized as
follows:

- Sven does not like the idea to have a separate port with a 
full native 64-bit userland at all

- I doubt that it will be possible to get a reasonably complete
set of 64-bit libraries with Svens approach. Every single library
package in the Debian archive would have to be changed to create
two libraries (a 32-bit and a 64-bit version) instead of one.
I think it would be much easier to get multiarch working in the
same way as it will be done for the amd64/i386 case, i.e. the
64-bit library versions should be provided by a separate native
64-bit port.


Can the two efforts be combined? I think yes, they can.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive - they can coexist
with each other. Moreover, most things which are done within one
approach are also useful for the other one.

Regards
Andreas Jochens