Re: [PATCH 00/18] Make common x86 arch area for i386 and x86_64 - Take 2

Linus Torvalds
2007-03-15T16:24:42Z

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Andi Kleen wrote:

> > That's *exactly* what the patches do (except it's called "arch/x86", which
> > is clearly the best option - please don't use "ia" _anywhere_ except for
> > "ia64", since that's the only architecture that is really "intel
> > architecture").
>
> And i860 @)

Yeah, well (and the i960).. I don't think it's very likely that we'll ever
support that in the kernel ;)

(There are others. i432 is the really *classic* intel architecture. It was
such a spectacular failure that it's still remembered today, even though
it was never actually used).

> Well I just see a lot of pain from these patches but I doubt
> they will avoid any bugs. If people don't compile test both
> archs they will always likely break on another. There are lots
> of subtle dependencies that are not expressed in the pathname
> even after this intrusive operation (e.g. in the includes).

Well, we'veliterally had bugs because people who modified i386 files
didn't even *realize* that they were also used on x86-64.

I do agree that we'd need to look at do the same thing for include files,
for the same reason.

Linus