Re: Switching ppc64el port name to ppc64le
Hi Lion,
I'd like to contribute w/ the discussion.
On 08/28/2014 02:40 PM, Lior Kaplan wrote:
[...] why they chose to swap
the le (little endian) to el.[...]
It's an existing tradition, AFAICT:
Looking at the ppc64el patch for dpkg, the maintainer's response is [1]:
"""
I see this being supported already by config.{guess, sub}, good :), and
*the arch name matches existing conventions*, so I'll merge the patch
[...]
"""
So, looking at dpkg's cputable [2] 'Debian name' column, the 'el/eb'
suffix for endianness is indeed, clearly, the convention.
Interestingly, on the 'GNU name' column, it looks like that is the
convention too, being 'le' different than the others ('el/eb').
(although I'm not familiar w/ most other existing GNU names/aliases,
nor the reasons/how they're chosen)
> [...] In all the relevant tool chain tools it is
called ppc64le, and this is what other distributions (fedora / opensuse)
have adopted for this port.
Indeed. I believe the reason for that is 2-fold:
- 1 the GNU toolchain would follow GNU names
- 2 /may/ be just that the 'existing tradition' for/adopted
by those distros is to follow GNU names. (I don't happen to know)
I was happy to see Wookey's announcement about the port going to be
official, [...]
High five! :)
[...] to fix
this minor but important issue. [...]
Hm, 'fix' implies this is something 'wrong/broken' or 'issue', as you
say. Well, I'm new to all this, and not a DD, thus probably not in
position to state 'is/isn't', but sure other respectable people can. :)
Yes, the rename will take effort, but this change will probably save a
lot of confusion in the future (and also code to gap the difference).
Hah, not just 'in the future' (the number of times I've been asked/poked
about this already.. :-)
In summary, I believe the 'existing tradition' point, mentioned by the
dpkg maintainer, indicates 'el' is OK/correct on our world.
cheers!
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=718945#10
[2] https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dpkg/dpkg.git/tree/cputable
--
Mauricio Faria de Oliveira
IBM Linux Technology Center
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