difference between armv3l and armv4l, ...

[Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

Hello, ...

some days ago, i received a serious bug report (90089) against one of my
package (ocaml, a ml implementation with a native code compiler).

The report was from Ryan Murray <rmurray@cyberhqz.com>, and complained that
the package did not support the armv3l subarchitecture.

Now, i have looked at this bug, saw that the upstream package checks for sa110
and armv4l, but rejects anything else. I have added armv3l support in the
3.01-4 version of this package, but as the ocaml package generate machine
code, maybe there is a reason for the armv3l subarch not being supported, so i
don't know if this will trully work.

Now, i responded to the bug report, asking some complementary advice (which i
should have found by myself), and asked for the new package to be tested
before i close the bug, but didn't get any response so far.

I also loged in at debian-arm.debian.org, but saw that this was a armv4l (a
netwinder, isn't it), so i couldn't trigger this bug.

So i would like to know :

  1) what kind of box is tha armv3l subarch ?
  2) do we have a debian box of this subarch accessible somewhere ?
  3) could someone with access to said hardware please test the package ? 
    -> i guess just building the package on this subarch would be fine, since
       the build process will buil the native code compiler ocamlopt, and then
       try building both the bytecode and nativecode compiler with it. If
       somethign is wrong, it will most probably be detected during this
       phase.
  4) is there something i can put in the package description to say that only
     the armv4l and sa110 subarch are supported ? Will a package compiled on a
     armv4l (for example) also work on another flavor of the arm arch ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther