On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 1:21 AM, Alexander Sack <a...@linaro.org> wrote: > 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 > > Can we improve error reporting for those? Or maybe shipping a > check-install script that probes for proper 32-bit libs?
On a 64 bit system with no 32 bit libraries at all then you see the scary and misleading '-bash: arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc: No such file or directory'. Bash tried to run the program, couldn't find the lib/ld-linux.so.2 loader, and fails. I wonder if there's a fat binary style wrapper that can give you a more informative message. Say some 64 bit code that runs if you're on a 64 bit host that prints 'This is a 32 bit program. Please see README.txt for instructions on how to install the required 32 bit libraries.' I like the 'hey, if something's wrong run check-install.sh' idea. >> * Some users can't install extra packages and may not be allowed the >> 32 bit libraries > > What libs are potentially missing? How many of those could get linked > in statically? Fairly minimal - just those provided by the LSB such as zlib, ncurses, libm, and libc. More esoteric libraries such as expat are already statically linked. Unfortunately a clean 64 bit install doesn't even include a 32 bit libc. It feels wrong to statically link it. Note that CodeSourcery's compiler is 32 bit only and dynamically links against libc. -- Michael _______________________________________________ linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
