Re: large file support? (fwd)

Martin von Loewis (martin@mira.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Sun, 17 Aug 1997 21:09:37 +0200

> hpa@transmeta.com (H. Peter Anvin) writes:
>
> > Hmmm... I'd think I personally would prefer the 64-bit systems to use
> > 64 bits throughout (then open == open64 on those platforms, etc.)
>
> Of course, there is no reason to complicate things. The LFS is really
> only meant for 32 bit systems. If you don't want to add the extra
> interface in the kernel for 64 bit systems this isn't a problem since
> we can simply use alises in the libc.

An issue is backwards compatibility for those systems. If they use
32 bit values for the file size in struct stat today, they have to
accomodate a structure change anyway. Sure, this is possible, like
the __xstat hack in libc/x86 shows (is that used on the other
architectures?).

So you have:
- to support old binaries with the old interface, preferably with the
same libc image as the new interface.
- to recompile all interesting applications to take advantage of the
interface change.
- to modify the source code of those applications so that they run
on x86.

Together, this makes it not really necessary to extend the old
interface to 64 bits.

As a first step, we need the kernel support, anyway.

Regards,
Martin