Re: AArch64 planning BoF at DebConf
+++ Henrique de Moraes Holschuh [2012-07-20 16:55 -0300]:
> On Fri, 20 Jul 2012, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> > Naming
> > ======
> >
> > Naming issues: ARM are calling the new 64-bit architecture
> > AArch64. Other people don't like that and various other names have
> > been proposed for use elsewhere. Debian/Ubuntu developers have already
> > picked the name "arm64" in dpkg and elsewhere.
>
> Maybe a patch should be sent to GNU config upstream so that arm64
> becomes known to config.sub and config.guess as an alias for aarch64?
That's not necessary, because dpkg (-architecture) does the necessary
conversions between 'debian arch name' and 'GNU arch/triplet names'.
So autotools already has aarch64-linux-gnu and that works fine with
Debian (in the same way that 'amd64' is 'x86_64-linux-gnu' from a GNU
tools POV). The one _good_ reason for using the aarch64 name is avoiding
accidental matches with arm* in various bits of configery so leaving
that alone probably makes sense despite the silly name.
Arm64 everywhere would have been neater but unless someone is
volunteering for a massive argument and changing upstream gcc and
glibc and autofoo and volunteering to fix up the configery that will
break in numerous places it's best left well alone. (I was all for
changing it for a while, but have been persuaded, not by ARM, I hasten
to add :-) that we have more important things to do with our time than
bikeshed about upstream's funny naming, which does at least have the
major benefit of being a unique string.)
Wookey
--
Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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