Subject: Re: MACHINE_ARCH vs. OBJ_ARCH
To: None <tv@pobox.com, tech-toolchain@NetBSD.ORG>
From: None <Havard.Eidnes@runit.sintef.no>
List: port-mips
Date: 07/26/1998 18:23:09
> In the interest of trying on another's shoes, I'll propose
> Jonathan's own alternate solution, OBJ_ARCH, with all extra
> bases covered.  Please respond with any comments.

I think this looks fine (as far as I can tell), but I'm still
left with a question which I think entered into this discussion
early on:

 o What does a user have to do to determine what OBJ_ARCHs his
   combination of OS and hardware can run?  In particular, is
   there some command which can be run to find this information,
   short of actually trying to run the binaries?

There really, really, needs to be a good solution to this issue,
precisely to avoid the type of questions Todd hinted at (``Why do
these binary packages that I spent the entire evening downloading
not run on my machine?'').

While I have your attention, a couple of more random questions:

 o I assume the output of "uname -m" on NetBSD will be "mips" for
   all machines with a MIPS processor, irrespective of its
   endianness or wheter it's a MIPS1 or MIPS3?

 o Are there any plans to have the ability to run both 64-bit and
   32-bit binaries on the MIPS port?  Do the shared libraries
   have to exist in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants?  If yes,
   where should each of them be stored?

Regards,

- H=E5vard