From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 31 23:36:14 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33DF716A4FE for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:36:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@mail.gbch.net) Received: from gw.gbch.net (gw.gbch.net [203.143.238.93]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0A3D243D79 for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:35:36 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd@mail.gbch.net) Received: (qmail 52861 invoked from network); 1 Nov 2006 09:35:30 +1000 Received: from iliad.gbch.net (172.16.1.9) by gw.gbch.net with SMTP; 1 Nov 2006 09:35:30 +1000 Received: (qmail 73224 invoked by uid 1001); 1 Nov 2006 09:35:28 +1000 Message-ID: Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 09:35:28 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Mark Linimon References: <45475298.5090709@inoc.net> <20061031153134.0f587f84.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> <20061031215648.GA1884@soaustin.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20061031215648.GA1884@soaustin.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i; gjb-muttsend.sh 1.7 2004-10-05 X-Uptime: 28 days X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE i386 X-Location: Brisbane, Australia; 27.49841S 152.98439E X-URL: http://www.gbch.net/gjb.html X-Blog: http://www.gbch.net/gjb/blog/ X-Image-URL: http://www.gbch.net/gjb/gjb-auug048.gif X-PGP-Key-Fingerprint: EBB2 2A92 A79D 1533 AC00 3C46 5D83 B6FB 4B04 B7D6 X-Request-PGP: http://www.gbch.net/keys/4B04B7D6.asc Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Bill Moran Subject: Re: 6.x from i386 to amd64 X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:36:14 -0000 On 2006-10-31, Mark Linimon wrote: > On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 06:52:27AM +1000, Greg Black wrote: > > I found that a very large number of ports that mattered to me were marked > > i386 only. > > In some cases these designations are obsolete. They will require people- > power to work through them and see if they are overused. > > In particular, many of these ought to have logic to set BROKEN to say > "currently doesn't work on amd64" rather than *_FOR_ARCHS which indicates > "can't ever work on amd64". Even in some of those cases "currently doesn't > work" might be obsolete; it will take people with amd64 boxes running > native willing to test them and report back. Thanks for the extra information; that makes the situation much clearer. > Yes, this is going to take a great deal of hard work by many people. Indeed. And that's the point I was making in my original contribution to this thread which was begun by somebody seeking guidance on the process for migrating from i386 to amd64 mode. I only jumped in to point out that such a migration could lead to pain, because of the situation with the ports. That's going to be an issue for quite some time. One thing I failed to mention at the outset, and which bears mentioning now, is that FreeBSD-6.1 (and later) itself works just fine on amd64, and I have no concerns about that. In the case of my particular workload, the performance of my box is pretty much the same in either i386 mode or amd64 mode. That box shows up in dmesg as: CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ (2009.27-MHz 686-class CPU) real memory = 2147418112 (2047 MB) FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs > > I didn't look for PRs and didn't submit any. > > If everyone does that, then yes, the situation won't improve. Fair enough. In my defence, I'm fully committed at present and I have only one amd64 machine which I need for my real work. I can't afford to run it in amd64 mode, because so much of what I need is currently broken in a 64-bit world. That much of that broken software is interpreters and compilers for languages I use is a pretty sad reflection on people who should know a bit more about writing correct software, but that's got nothing to do with FreeBSD, except as a platform for running it on. Perhaps I'll have some more time available next year (by which time I hope to have completed my current projects), and then I might be able to drop out of my other free software commitments and have a look at helping out with some of the FreeBSD ports. But that's certainly a few months away. Greg