Re: Can we drop upstream Linux x32 support?

Kevin Easton
2018-12-13T12:12:20Z

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 10:05:14AM +0100, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 6:03 AM Kevin Easton <kevin@guarana.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 11:29:14AM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > ...
> > > I can't say anything about the syscall interface. However, what I do know
> > > is that the weird combination of a 32-bit userland with a 64-bit kernel
> > > interface is sometimes causing issues. For example, application code usually
> > > expects things like time_t to be 32-bit on a 32-bit system. However, this
> > > isn't the case for x32 which is why code fails to build.
> >
> > OpenBSD and NetBSD both have 64-bit time_t on 32-bit systems and have
> > had for four or five years at this point.
>
> They can also do flag-day changes and break existing applications, Linux not.

Sure, but the point is that most widely-used software has probably by
now come in to contact with systems where time_t is bigger than long.

- Kevin