Re: How about sparcv7, sparcv8, and sparcv9 binary debian packages? [Was Re: improving ssh2 performance on SPARCv8/SPARCv9 systems]

[Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>]

> 
> Solaris handles this with library heirachies.  I've heard some hair
> pulling about how "ugly" this is, but I don't think it works pretty
> good.  Just look at the quandry that we debianers are in over this. 
> The library linker has a bit of extra code to hunt down the correct
> library to link in based on the machine type.  Of course, they are
> focused on selling hardware, so they have cast off support for v7
> completely, IIRC.

Linux has it too. We can put things in /lib/v9 and /usr/lib/v9. Problem
is that upgrades are impossible (because you can't unpack libc6 and
libc6-v9 at the same time).

> And there is more than just v[789], there are other sparcs as well,
> like the fujitsus, and help me out here hardware types, but weren't
> there a few external FPUs back in the v8 days?  The library heiarchy
> idea would sure allow on-the-fly support of more stuff, like the VIS
> of v9 and so forth.  Did US3 add any user instructions?

Yes, it would help out in a static system. Like I said, upgrades are
near to impossible though. I used to have libc6-v9 packages available
(aswell as libc6-i686 which went into /lib/i686/), but that soon had to
be removed because of the headaches it caused.


Ben

-- 
Debian     - http://www.debian.org/
Linux 1394 - http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/
Subversion - http://subversion.tigris.org/


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org