Re: Linux/IA-64 byte order

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Mon, 8 Mar 1999 22:41:01 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, David Miller wrote:
> data. And memory mapping is so much better than plain reading.
>
> Actually, besides my per-load/store endianness selection, there is
> another scheme (supported on UltraSparc, could be supported by IA-64,
> I don't know).
>
> There are often endianness selection bits in the page table entries,
> add a new flag to mmap, and voila.

Wrong.

Think about "memcpy()" and structures (imagine a structure that mixes
16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit data).

There is no easy solution to bi-endianness. Anybody who thinks there is is
just sadly misguided. You should aim for having a systemwide endianness,
anything else is just asking for trouble for absolutely no real gain.

"Just say no". LE is here to stay, just live with it.

Linus

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