Re: Intent to port to ia64

[Andrew Lenharth <adl@cs.washington.edu>]

On 29 Jul 2000, Daniel Schepler wrote:
> Since ia64 supports backward binary compatibility with ia32, it would
> be nice if eventually the ia64 version of dpkg could install i386
> packages.  However, I cannot think of a good mechanism, so this is a
> more long-term goal, unless I'm missing an obvious solution.  (So far
> my ideas include: cross-compiling versions of the libraries to use
> /usr/i386-linux/lib, or implicit diversions of duplicated files.  I
> suppose precedent would say to take the cross-compiling path, but that
> has disadvantages as the recent libc5 thread pointed out.)

I hate to bring up a can of worms, but this is a good example of a nice
use of sub archetectures. ia64 can install all i586, i386 packages. EV6
can install EV5 packages etc.  Also, from intels plans, future ia64 chips
will be backwards compatible, but old apps won't be able to take advantage
of additional pipelines and execution units (as those are fixed at
compile time).

Andrew Lenharth