Re: ELF dynamic loader name

On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:42:49 +0100
Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des_at_des.no> wrote:

> Andrew Reilly <andrew-freebsd_at_areilly.bpc-users.org> writes:
> > Danny Braniss <danny_at_cs.huji.ac.il> writes:
> > > what Apple has is one file, that will run the appropiate binary if
> > > run on an i386 or a ppc, not 2 different files - universal binary -
> > > not rosetta.
> > Sure, but that's got a bunch of different driving factors.  I
> > don't know, for example, whether you can build a four-way
> > executable (ia32, x86_64, ppc, ppc64).  Well, you probably can,
> > but I'd be a bit surprised if anyone has.  FreeBSD supports even
> > more architectures: it just doesn't scale.
> 
> Two-way i386 + amd64 executables would be very useful, since they can
> run on the same hardware with just a change of kernel.

How is that useful?  I386 executables can run on the same hardware
with the same changes of kernel.  If you're not planning to
change kernel, then you can use amd64-only.  I thought that the
whole fat-binary issue revolved around binary distribution (also
by networked file systems) to *different* architectures.  Well,
that's what Apple and NeXT seem to have used them for.  Apollo,
Sun, MIPS/SGI, HP(?) always seemed to manage with PATH
configurations and/or variant symlinks.  I can't see why that
would be any harder for FreeBSD?

Cheers,

-- 
Andrew