Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: fat / multi arch binaries? | From | Bernd Petrovitsch <> | Date | Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:58:53 +0200 |
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On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 19:29 +0200, Antonio Vargas wrote: > On 9/28/05, Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> wrote: [...] > > does linux support binaries with code > > for several architectures? I read that > > elf allowes that, and for example > > apple plans to use it on mac os X, > > but I couldn't find anything whether > > such binaries would work with linux > > or not. can you tell me? > > OSX begat from NeXT and NeXT had these same "fat binaries". They are not new :)
Yup. For 4 archs IIRC.
> > if linux supports that, it should > > also work for merging x86 and x86_64 > > into one binary? would ther be a way > > you don't want that ;)
ACK. It boils down to have n (i.e. lots of) cross-compilers installed. Compiling needs n times as much time - you compile once for every architecture. The binaries get much larger. You have to store and transport them at startup (OK, this is pretty pathetic.) And then the shared loader/kernel throws n-1 versions away. On NeXT folks started to disable the FAT binaries just because of these reasons. ANd I hear the Intel-using world moan if they det on Debian >10 times as large binaroes just to support MIPS and 68k ....
> > to run the 32bit version in the 64bit > > kernel, if requested? are there any > > 32bit user-space can run 100% on 64bit kernel, this is usual in sparc > if i'm not mistaken
And on Linux too. OO.org is on the major distros only as 32bit available and runs "natively" on x86_64. Actually the example is not that good.
> > tools to create such binaries? > > > > with google I found info from 97 > > that indicades elf format has no > > provision for fat binaries and linux > > doesn't support them. is that still > > true? > > just remember that linux is mainly about source access, so having > "fat" binaries is just wrong because the one-true-way is to get the > sources and compile for your arch directly. this can be done by hand, > semi-automated (aka gentoo) or automated (aka debian, fedora, etc...) > by just installing from precompiled binaries
ACK. With apt-get/yum/portage/... most of the problems which were solved with fat binaries a decade ago are already solved.
Bernd -- Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services
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