On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 3:32 AM, Michael Hope <michael.h...@linaro.org> wrote: > Hi there. I have a style question. For the pre-built versions of > gcc-linaro, should we release a i686 version that also runs on x86_64, > or do separate i686 and x86_64 builds? > > If we do just an i686 version then: > * There's less to test > * There's one 'linux' binary so less confusion on what to download > and a simpler download page > * Most end users will already have the 32 bit libraries due to Skype or Flash > > but it has some downsides: > * May not work 'out of the box' > * Cryptic failures if you don't have the 32 bit libraries installed > * Some users can't install extra packages and may not be allowed the > 32 bit libraries > > There's no real performance or compatibility advantage in also having > an x86_64 build. > > Any thoughts? I quite like having an i686 only build but am worried > about the initial experience. > > -- Michael >
Hello Michael, I've been using the Linaro toolchain in Ubuntu for about 6 months and a few days ago installed on a machine with Fedora x86_64. I'm not an GCC expert so probably I'm on the initial experience group. Since Linaro doesn't have rpms for its tool-chain I first tried to install each package from source (gcc, gdb, binutils, etc) but then found your pre-built binaries download page. For me it worked out-of-the-box, I just had to install the Fedora Linux Standard Base and 32 lib compatibility packages. I don't really care if there is some performance gain using an x86_64 tool-chain since I only care of the ARMv7 generated binaries performance. In this regard the Linaro GCC is far more better than other ARM compilers both in the size of the generated binaries and their execution time on our board. So, I think is not necessary to have a pre-built version for x86_64. Users that want an x86_64 tool-chain can always build it using the crosstool-NG IMHO. Hope it helps, -- Javier Martínez Canillas (+34) 682 39 81 69 Barcelona, Spain _______________________________________________ linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
