Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 03:04:20 -0800 From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.org> To: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org> Cc: amd64@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ruby-1.8.1.p2 broken on amd64 Message-ID: <20031124110420.GA51510@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <20031124092900.GA12109@xor.obsecurity.org> References: <20031124002433.GB6264@xor.obsecurity.org> <86znemcf0m.knu@iDaemons.org> <20031124092900.GA12109@xor.obsecurity.org>
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> > Now, do you know what is the canonical architecture name for the amd64 > > platform? Did we diverge from GNU by adopting amd64, or is GNU just > > behind us? I checked the just released autoconf 2.58, but the > > situation did not seem to have changed. AMD marketing refused to pick a name for a long time -- so "x86-64" was adopted by those doing the open source work. Right before Opteron launch, AMD marketing woke up and choose "AMD64" as the architecture name to follow Microsoft[1] and to make it clear who invented the technology when Intel follows AMD in the [near] future. I personally led the charge to get the misspelled "x86_64" changed to "amd64" in the open source world. Some followed (Debian and NetBSD), others were stubborn and said it too hard to change the few hundred users that existed at time -- SuSE and RedHat. So we're stuck with multiple names for the entire future of AMD64 due to those two players. Thus GNU autoconf accepts amd64-*-freebsd* as a configure target, but too many of the software packages don't know what to do with "amd64" so GNU autoconf silently changes it so "x86_64" at the moment. [1] then Microsoft turns face and calls the platform "64-bit Extended Systems"
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