Re: [PATCH v7 5/6] powerpc/64: Make COMPAT user-selectable disabled on littleendian by default.

From: Segher Boessenkool
Date: Mon Sep 02 2019 - 09:01:32 EST


On Mon, Sep 02, 2019 at 12:03:12PM +1000, Michael Ellerman wrote:
> Michal Suchanek <msuchanek@xxxxxxx> writes:
> > On bigendian ppc64 it is common to have 32bit legacy binaries but much
> > less so on littleendian.
>
> I think the toolchain people will tell you that there is no 32-bit
> little endian ABI defined at all, if anything works it's by accident.

There of course is a lot of powerpcle-* support. The ABI used for it
on linux is the SYSV ABI, just like on BE 32-bit.

There also is specific powerpcle-linux support in GCC, and in binutils,
too. Also, config.guess/config.sub supports it. Half a year ago this
all built fine (no, I don't test it often either).

I don't think glibc supports it though, so I wonder if anyone builds an
actual system with it? Maybe busybox or the like?

> So I think we should not make this selectable, unless someone puts their
> hand up to say they want it and are willing to test it and keep it
> working.

What about actual 32-bit LE systems? Does anyone still use those?


Segher