Re: [PATCH 0/11 v3] enable "make ARCH=x86"

[Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2007 at 08:54:44AM +0100, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 10:23:23PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> > >This is the patch that get rid of ARCH=i386 and ARCH=x86_64
> > >and introduce ARCH=x86.
> > >It touches several files but the changes are all one or two-liners.
> > >
> > >      x86: drop backward compatibility symlinks to i386/boot and 
> > >      x86_64/boot
> > >      kbuild: sanity check the specified arch
> > 
> > 
> > IMO it negatives impacts the workflow when you -remove- the ability to 
> > set 32/64-bit on the make command line.
> > 
> > Building and testing for both architectures now requires the additional 
> > step of editing .config, which is a clear workflow negative impact at 
> > least for me.
> When it was decided to unify i386 and x86_64 it was at the same time
> decided to handle them as a *single* architecture.
> 
> Keeping ARCH=i386 and ARCH=x86_64 around is just a way to pretend
> this is two diffrent architectures which is no longer the case.
> 
If you do that, then things like randconfigs will randomly break if you
happen to use a toolchain targetted specifically at i386 or so.

randconfigs are pretty useful for testing, it would be nice to have a
facility to keep these working without having to have a script grep the
.config to figure out which toolchain prefix to use.

This is one of the things I've been wondering about with an sh/sh64
unification, as we have no option but having completely different
toolchains, and CONFIG_64BIT=y won't work there when they are both
using a 32-bit ABI.