From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 4 Dec 2001 19:40:12 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 4 Dec 2001 19:40:02 -0500 Received: from neon-gw-l3.transmeta.com ([63.209.4.196]:62468 "EHLO neon-gw.transmeta.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 4 Dec 2001 19:39:49 -0500 Message-ID: <3C0D6CB6.7000905@zytor.com> Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 16:39:18 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Organization: Zytor Communications User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20010913 X-Accept-Language: en, sv MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ingo Oeser CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Endianness-aware mkcramfs In-Reply-To: <3C0BD8FD.F9F94BE0@mvista.com> <3C0CB59B.EEA251AB@lightning.ch> <9uj5fb$1fm$1@cesium.transmeta.com> <20011205013630.C717@nightmaster.csn.tu-chemnitz.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Ingo Oeser wrote: > > Yes, from a CS point of view. > > But practically cramfs is created once to contain some kind of > ROM for embedded devices. So if we never modify these data again, > why not creating it in the required byte order? > > Why wasting kernel cycles for le<->be conversion? Just because > it's more general? For writable general purpose file systems it > makes sense, but to none of romfs, cramfs etc. > Because otherwise you far too easily end up in a situation where every system suddenly need to be able to support *BOTH* endianisms, at which point you're really screwed; supporting dual endianism is significantly more expensive than supporting the "wrong" endianism, and it affects all systems. Nip this one in the bud. -hpa