[Debian-ppc64-devel] Re: 64bit status report : biarch toolchain and ppc64 debian kernel.

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 22:55 -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> On 8/18/05, Sven Luther <sven.luther at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> 
> > That brings us to the next step, what is the best way to get most libraries to
> > build 64bit packages ? This would need some extensive change in the packaging
> > stuff probably.
> 
> As you know, there are two ways:
> 
> a. Major hacking for each and every package.
> b. Pure and sane 64-bit system.

At the expense of performances, disk space, etc... of course

> One is a never-ending task. It's like having a millstone around
> your neck while you walk through the snow, uphill both ways.

Which is what other distros are doing without trouble tho ... without
major hacking to packages afaik...

> Try looking at this the other way around. Given a 64-bit system,
> how do you create an emulation environment for 32-bit crud?
> See also: FreeBSD's Linux emulation, Linux's IRIX emulation,
> Wine, DOSEMU, Linux's SunOS emulation, NetBSD's Linux
> emulation, support for a.out on a libc5 Linux system, etc.
> 
> We never had /libELF or /usr/libELF directories. Why not?
> Despite that, a.out worked fine on ELF systems. That's even
> with shared libraries.