Re: i386 compatibility & libstdc++

[martin@v.loewis.de (Martin v. Löwis)]

Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> writes:

> It would surely be nice to see performance numbers from actual
> applications. After all, the applications are normally doing
> some things besides low level atomic operations.

Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how often applications
invoke these operations. Notice, however, that primitive operations
like std::string manipulation use these functions, so they *are* used
quite often.

> Nevertheless, I think it would be best to also start a full 
> Debian/i686 port which will be 100% compatible with Debian on i386 
> except that it only runs on PentiumPro compatible machines,
> i.e. Pentium 2/3/4/M, Xeon, Celeron, Athlon, Duron and Opteron 
> but not Pentium, K5, K6 and most VIA/cyrix chips.

I think it would be best to start a port that stops supporting i386,
period, both for performance and compatibility reasons.

Regards,
Martin