On Wednesday, November 21, 2001, at 08:46 PM, e.sammer wrote:
4. Arch Dependant Directories
I have seen a number of projects that make use of architecture dependant
directories (gcc, bin86 utils, GNUstep, ...) which I've always been
curious about. In theory, most things on a Linux / Unix system are arch
dependant at their base level including many headers, libraries, and
most anything compiled. To me, it seems redundant to create arch
directories on the system when the entire system is of that arch. I know
of a few people who cross compile apps, but the base arch (to my
knowledge) is always the same (x86, PPC, MIPS, SPARC, etc.). I'm not
aware of (except for one Sun PCI card and the Apple 7100, I think) a
system other than maybe mainframes running multiple images of Linux that
can natively support completely different hardware archs running at the
same time, in the same environment. I have never actually tried to
compile a PPC binary on a x86 Linux box, but it seems slightly odd to
me. The major thing here is directory cleanliness and whether or not
directory structures like
"$GS_SYSTEM_DIR/Libraries/ix86/linux-gnu/gnu-gnu-gnu" are really
required. Of course, I'm willing to learn.
NFS ... fileserver containing binaries used by different machines.
Actually, there is an option 'FLATTENED' to remove the hierarcy ... but
I don't think anyone actually uses it and for all I know it may have been
broken in recent changes.