From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by oss.sgi.com (8.11.2/8.11.3) id g27EIQu28898 for linux-mips-outgoing; Thu, 7 Mar 2002 06:18:26 -0800 Received: from dea.linux-mips.net (a1as01-p99.stg.tli.de [195.252.185.99]) by oss.sgi.com (8.11.2/8.11.3) with SMTP id g27EIM928893 for ; Thu, 7 Mar 2002 06:18:22 -0800 Received: (from ralf@localhost) by dea.linux-mips.net (8.11.6/8.11.1) id g27DIBF03066; Thu, 7 Mar 2002 14:18:11 +0100 Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 14:18:11 +0100 From: Ralf Baechle To: Geert Uytterhoeven Cc: Marc Karasek , Linux MIPS Subject: Re: Questions? Message-ID: <20020307141811.A3041@dea.linux-mips.net> References: <20020307140754.A1817@dea.linux-mips.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from geert@linux-m68k.org on Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 02:11:50PM +0100 X-Accept-Language: de,en,fr Sender: owner-linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Precedence: bulk On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 02:11:50PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > > The MIPS ABI only covers big endian systems - every "real" MIPS UNIX > > system is big endian. Everything else is a GNU extension. There is > > hardly any reason to choose a particular byteorder as usually endianess > > swapping takes so little CPU time that it isn't even meassurable but so > > I'm told there are exceptions. If portability of software you're > > going to write wrt. external data representation (disk or network) is > > of any importance then I suggest you use a system of the opposite > > endianess which trip problems much faster. > > I really like the last part! ;-) > > BTW, you forgot to mention to go for a full 64-bit port, to trip even more > problems faster :-) Fortunately in practice that hasn't been a minefield as big as you'd imagine. Ralf