Bug#254598: Name of the Debian x86-64/AMD64 port
On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>
> On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Scott James Remnant wrote:
>
> > "May the dpkg and/or apt maintainers select the name of an
> > architecture?"
>
> I'd say no to this. Historically the apt/dpkg folk have never done that,
> primarily because they have no interest in the architecture name, it is
> just a value in a table.
It's pretty clear what the port team wants as a name... so why not use it?
The current email signed voted is at 14-0 and the vote on alioth, which
includes non-porter votes, is at 50-3.
> > "What name for the x86-64/AMD64 architecture should be used?"
>
> Mmm, tricky.
>
> I personally like the x86?64 variety. I can't see any reason to use amd64,
> especially since userland binaries built for amd64 will work on ia32e. I
> think the choice of amd64 made some sense before the Intel announcement,
> but I think it sill would have been better to align with the kernel/gcc.
> Now it makes very little sense and we should ditch it while we still can.
Perhaps you haven't read my emails since the list software ate them?
The x86_64 variant is passable, but as I said in my other email what are
we going to do about the other Debian kernels? FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD all
use the amd64 name as well. Also, gcc uses amd64-*-* as well the only
thing that uses x86_64 exclusively is the _Linux_ kernel. As I mentioned
in the previous email out of the various os/dist that support the
x86_64/amd64 arch 8 out of 9 call it _amd64_. That is a fairly clear
majority.
Intel doesn't know what it wants to call the arch it just knows it
doesn't want to refer to it by the arch's proper name. They have used
both em64t and ia32e to refer to the amd64 arch.
> It would be terribly nice to be able to use the LSB mandated x86_64 as the
> arch name - simply because it is LSB. I'm not sure of the implications of
> extra _'s in filenames though. AFAIK nothing should actually be parsing
> the filenames like this so it might be ok.
Even the LSB refers to the arch as amd64 everywhere but the packaging
part, the only reason I can tell that x86_64 is used for packaging is
due to rpm requiring it in current versions. That doesn't change the
fact that all dists but fedora actually refer to the port as amd64.
Chris
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