On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 3:35 AM, russell <str...@willows7.myzen.co.uk> wrote: > Hi Alasdair, > > From a personal perspective I would prefer if everything was 64bit and 32bit > libraries were provided for backward compatibility. I see no reason to > provide 32bit binaries if 64bit versions can be created, 64bit x86 chips > have been available since 2003, virtually all the CPUs on the market are > 64bit capable. The only reason to support 32bit binaries are for older > computers with older cpus, or the application is not 64bit aware. ZFS > provides us with a 128bit filesystem but we cling on to antiquated 32bit > applications. >
Solaris on SPARC, which has had no 32-bit systems for even longer (and no 64-bit kernel since S10), still includes 32-bit applications because 64-bit versions are often slower. This happens less frequently on x86 because IA-32 performance can be impaired, but it's still an important reason. The number of bits ZFS uses in its storage addressing scheme is largely irrelevant. Perhaps a decade or so down the road, we can stop building 32-bit applications. > However, some people may feel that that is bit draconian, so may I suggest a > more acceptable alternative. > Provide within Package Manager, a 64/32 bit application preference option > (which the user selects and the system records), the list of Packages > provided are then dependant of the users 64/32bit choice. If an application > is available as a combined 64 and 32 bit application then it is always > listed irrespective of the users choice. > All regular applications have a plain 32-bit version. An application can support multiple extended ISAs using a standard mechanism (see isalist(5), isaexec(3)), allowing the instruction set to be selected at runtime. These are usually delivered as a combined package. The 64-bit ISA is handled the same way as the others. pkg(5) has a as-yet unused "facet" mechanism that would let you filter components of packages to not be installed; for example, development files or documentation. Adding arch tags has been proposed, although I think the original use case was for not wasting space on 32-bit systems. > Unfortunately this will result in many applications having to be built in 32 > and 64 bit versions. The IPS servers will record the number of downloads 32 > v 64 bit and the results can be published annually. All standard "64-bit" applications are already combined 32- and 64-bit. -Albert _______________________________________________ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list OpenIndiana-discuss@openindiana.org http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
