Re: x32 “half” arrived… now what?
On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 09:58:00AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser@tarent.de> writes:
>
> > No complaints against x32 per sé, I want to crossgrade there once it’s
> > in, but for as long as it’s broken like this, it doesn’t make it look
> > good.
>
> Be aware that x32 has sizeof(time_t) > sizeof(long), so you should expect
> SUBSTANTIAL porting of packages to be required. Particularly since that
> arrangement is explicitly unsupported by the GNU coding standards:
>
> Similarly, don't make any effort to cater to the possibility that
> `long' will be smaller than predefined types like `size_t'.
It was the case in old versions of gnulib, but appears to be no more.
Too bad, quite a few packages ship embedded copies of ancient gnulib.
I just submitted a patch in one such case (#711412), it might possibly
apply elsewhere.
It was Linus' decree that no new ABI is allowed to suffer from the Y2k38
bug even if its word size is 32 bit, and I'd say he's right. This means
that this problem will bite us the next time another 32 bit arch comes,
so there's no excuse to use this as an argument against x32.
> It's not quite as bad as the porting required for large file support, but
> the consequences of not porting are worse.
How come? I don't think runtime bugs that are not some kind of a Y2k38 bug
are likely, and unlike i386 and the rest, they're actually fixable now.
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