Hi Adrian, On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 at 14:00, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, 2025-06-13 at 13:55 +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > > From its inception, Linux/m68k used an ABI compatible with SunOS, > > which dates back to the MC68000, and was probably the most popular > > UNIX OS running on m68k at that time. Several other UNIX vendors > > followed a similar path, starting from the MC68000. E.g. the HP-UX > > Portability Guide[1] states that HP-UX on HP9000/300 (based on SVR2 > > at that time, apparently) uses an alignment of 2 bytes, too.
> > Linux has a strong history of not breaking the ABI between kernel and > > user space, so changing that ABI is a no-go. > Okay and how does this now fix the problems we're having on Linux/m68k? > > https://wiki.debian.org/M68k/Alignment > > We're compatible to "fails to build from source" now. I'm not sure how this > is any helpful. > > I'm not sure why several people are contributing to this discussion with > the argument that this change would break the "Linux ABI" when the Linux > ABI is currently broken and doesn't even allow for Python to be built without > further modifications. You mean Python is broken, as it makes assumptions that are not guaranteed by the C standard (oops, which one? ;-) ? ;-) Lots of older packages used to build fine on much more obscure systems than Linux/m68k. Unfortunately people stopped caring for anything not 64-bit little endian. Yes, I know saying that doesn't help... > What is your suggested alternative? Do you expect me to patch broken packages > into all eternity? If keeping 2 bytes alignment ABI is so important to so many > people, I would expect proponents to come up with solutions. > > So far, I haven't seen any. Just arguments why my approach is wrong. You are completely ignoring the last sentence I wrote... > > What you do in the layers > > above (in the kernel), or above (in userspace) is something different... Gr{oetje,eeting}s, Geert -- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [email protected] In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds
