Re: cvsup on amd64 just broke today

Hi David,

Finally catching up on your email? ;)

On Sun, 2004-08-29 at 15:53, David O'Brien wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 08:54:43PM -0500, Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> > On 10-Aug-2004 Doug White wrote:
> > > On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> > >> # make update
> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------
> > >> >>> Running /usr/local/bin/cvsup
> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------
> > >> /usr/local/libexec/cvsup-static.i386.bin: 1: Syntax error: "("
> > >> unexpected
> > >> *** Error code 2
> > > 
> > > Can you run cvsup manually? It appears to be trying to execute a
> > > binary as a shell script here.
> > 
> > Tried that, got the same result.
> > 
> > I hadn't noticed it before, but it does strike me as odd that the
> > binary package for amd64 would include a file with "i386" in the name,
> > and which is, in fact, an ELF 32 binary.
> 
> Why is it odd?!?
> The ability to run legacy 32-bit x86 binaries under a 64-bit OS at
> full-speed is one of the huge capabilities AMD brought with this
> architecture.  Unless a binary does 64-bit math or addresses >4GB of
> memory why does something need to be 64-bit???

This is a little misleading.  You are throwing out the fact that the
amd64 has additional features in 64-bit mode that can significantly
increase performance.  Such as extra registers.

> The fact that all Open Source OS's have a 64-bit userland on all their
> 64-bit platforms that grew up from 32-bit CPU's shows how unsophisticated
> our build framework is.  "64-bit" Solaris today is really a 64-bit kernel
> and mostly 32-bit userland.

Except Solaris has identical architectures that were extended to
64-bit.  amd64 is a slightly different story.

> > Did something change today that would effect the handling of such a
> > file, perhaps?
> 
> Nope, it has been a 32-bit 'i386' binary since the day the port started
> supporting FreeBSD/AMD64.

This is a huge advantage that will hopefully be exploited more as time
goes by.  Tim has my extreme gratitude for adding Linux32 support.  It
has been a great help to me.  FreeBSD32 support not so much.  But I
really miss a JVM and Eclipse.  Maybe one day I will have the time to
pursue this.

Sean
(one satisfied amd64 owner)