Re: Concerns about AMD64 port

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Fri, Feb 06, 2004 at 03:02:38PM -0000, Markus Spitzli wrote:
> > [..] Some of us, however, would like to just get a quick-n-dirty port 
> > going so that we can use our 64bit systems as 64bit.  
>  
> I dont like quick-n-dirty solutions. its a easy way to workaround problems that
> have 
> to be solved. everyone say such a solution is temporary. But in fact they won't
> be 
> because everybody use it. I have seen that a lot in our company. You waste more
> time 
> to clean up.  

I don't see this as necessarily quick-n-dirty.  Perhaps that is how it
will be in the end, but I want this to be viable and usable.  In fact, I
see it as the most reasonable first step towards getting true multiarch
support.  I believe that trying to accomplish everything at once leads
to not getting much of anything accomplished; and we can see that is the
case here.  There is no end in sight to the multiarch problems as it
seems that the dpkg people and the multiarch people have yet to agree on
much of anything.  It could literally be a year or more before anything
moves on that front.

If we wait that year, and only then start tackling the 64-bit issue
seriously, where will we be?  We will still have to do the work of
building the 64-bit userland one way or another.

I would very much hope that my work is *not* just a temporary hack.  I
would rather see it as the base from which multiarch is added, though of
course that decision will not be up to me.

I also don't see this work as in any way complicating future multiarch
deployments, regardless of whether or not those future deployments use
this as a base.

-- John