On Sat, 25 Jul 1998, Michael L. Hitch wrote:

: > : : >MACHINE_ARCH SHOULD SPECIFY A COMPATIBLE SET OF BINARIES, AND IS DOCUMENTED
: > : : >TO DO SO.  That's a far more long-standing promise than the mips platforms
: > : : >have even existed.
: 
:   I'm curious as to where this is documented.

The most prominent use of MACHINE_ARCH to show a compatible set of binaries
is in the pkg system's documentation, Packages.txt; see section "Where to
get" (1.1), and pay attention to how it organizes binary pkgs.  See also the
sections "How to do" (1.2) and "Appendix B."

This was discussed quite thoroughly on NetBSD mailing lists long before
NetBSD/mips existed, and several times since, and I'm searching for their
references to docs now. I'll post any others that I find.  One discussion in
particular that I'm looking for is the thread about merging the m68k binary
sets under "the MACHINE_ARCH umbrella" (I believe that's what it was called
in the thread).

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)