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Re: Multilib and Linux.
- To: davem@redhat.com
- Subject: Re: Multilib and Linux.
- From: Matthew Kirkwood <weejock@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 23:11:14 +0100 (GMT)
- cc: law@cygnus.com, hjl@lucon.org, libc-hacker@cygnus.com, egcs@egcs.cygnus.com
On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, David Miller wrote:
> > I wonder how a Merced userland is going to work if we wish to
> > allow people to still compile 32-bit x86 binaries, even though
> > the instruction set is radically different between the two.
>
> Merced running i386 binaries is still stricly emulation, I believe,
> so I'd see that as cross-compilation, rather than multiple ABIs.
>
> I think it's still more of a gray area than this. The x86
> instructions will execute natively on the processor, so in this
> light using your analysis we could say that executing 32-bit Sparc
> binaries on UltraSparc cpus is emulation and that compiling such
> 32-bit Sparc binaries would be cross-compilation. :-)
But it's (probably :) a completely different instruction set, which I
don't think is the case with sparc/sparc64.
Unless I'm missing something, the ABI defines calling conventions, sizes
of basic types, &c., rather than the actual instruction set.
I suppose it's slightly grey in the case that both instruction sets are
"native", but it's basically a completely different toolchain, so
-m(merced|ix86) doesn't make much sense to me..
Matthew.