Paul Eggert wrote:
Perhaps we can nudge this process forward a bit by designing an
Autoconf macro that causes configure/make to default to 64-bit builds
on platforms that can support either 32 or 64.
...just provide a way to turn it off. :-)
I build on one box for an entire platform (e.g. "x86/Linux" is a
"platform"). Except for Linux, I think it is safe to switch to 64-bit
builds for all of them (where applicable). For Linux, I build on a
32-bit-only box that can't produce 64-bit binaries anyway. But someone
else might need to build 32-bit packages on a 64-bit box.
Otherwise I would be in favor of this, not just for time-related stuff
but any time building 32-bit is a needless limitation. For example,
programs that might be memory-hungry (sort comes to mind). Also because,
despite the pundits, 64-bit does seem to be slightly faster (at least
compared to a 32-bit build of the same program on the same machine).
--
Matthew
"There's nothing in the universe so permanent as a temporary government
agency." -- Phil Geusz
