Re: Adding x32 support to kernel package
OK, I eventually figured out that I also need to add x32 to the architecture
list in debian/config/defines. Then I also changed the x32 compiler to gcc-4.7
by following the example of alpha using gcc-4.5. But then checking
debian/control, it turned out that the -amd64 header packages were depending
on both gcc-4.6 and gcc-4.7 on both amd64 and x32. So I just skipped building
actual kernel packages for now and invoked binary-libc-dev_x32 manually.
I was thinking that x32 would just duplicate the linux-image-*-amd64 packages,
similar to the way i386 currently generates amd64 kernel packages. As for the
installer, I guess it would be up to them whether they want to build an x32
installer, or just add an option to the amd64 installer to install an x32
system. (Or maybe even make the amd64 installer based on x32, since I can't
imagine the installer ever needing more than 4G address space in a single
process.)
I'm curious why you think Debian wouldn't want to support x32. It's already
in dpkg, and the binutils and eglibc maintainers weren't rejecting the idea of
eventually adding support when I had exchanges with them. Also, I've been
seeing news that Ubuntu does plan to support x32 eventually.
(Sorry for the lack of quotation and possibly broken threading -- I'm not
currently subscribed to debian-kernel so I didn't get a copy of the message.)
--
Daniel Schepler
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