Brett Lymn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Not so Nick. There may be some cases where you deliberately have a > slow machine for reasons of power consumption/heat disappation, > perhaps a fanless machine, you want to update. Or just that the > fastest machine in the architecture you are targeting falls way behind > current machines (SPARC vs current P4, say). Telling someone to use a > faster machine is a trite answer but, in some cases, it is simply > infeasible.
People with special needs also have the budgets to hire people who solve the problem for them. If you can't afford it - don't get yourself special needs. > "improving existing operation" you just said it there. Cross building > means that you are not bound by the limitations of the target > hardware. This actually impacts the developers more than anyone else, > especially during the release cycle. Imagine having to restart a > build that takes literally days to complete because what seemed to be > a benign change that fixes a bug causes an architecture specific build > error. In a cross build environment the impact could be as little as > a hour or two instead of days. It means developers can do more stuff > because they are not waiting for the slower processors to grind > through a compile. Not cross compiling and actively discouraging cross compilation is why all OpenBSD architectures are constantly stress tested and therefore relatively stable while some other projects that shall not be named don't even have working boot blocks for the architectures they "support". //art
