Subject: Re: IMPORTANT: Change MACHINE_ARCH "arm" to "armel"?
To: Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>
From: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 05/20/2002 10:05:07
> Folks...
> 
> I can't believe I spaced it this long.
> 
> I think we need to change the current ARM MACHINE_ARCH from "arm"
> to "armel".  This is because we will soon be supporting a big-endian
> ARM platform (or two or three), and will thus need an "armeb".
> 
> Any objections?  If not, I can do the change quite quickly.
> 
> Again, sorry for bringing this up at the last minute, but if we're
> going to do it, we should do it before we ship 1.6.

I can't say I'm particularly keen on the idea from an aesthetic point of 
view.

I suspect that the vast majority of ARM systems will be little-endian, so 
why confuse things for the majority?

On platforms where we already use ...e[lb] it's often because there has 
been a long history of both platforms using both configurations, or 
because we are starting from scratch and can set up the name-space cleanly.

None of the above are sound technical reasons, so if there is a sound 
technical reason for changing I won't object; but I see no real reason to 
change just for consistency here.

R.