64 bit?

[phignuton]

<de-lurk>

Can anyone shed some light on the progress getting pure 64 bit libs for the niagara platform? I've been trying to get a sizeable list of open source apps to compile in a 64 bit kind of way, but they continue to fail linking as the libs are 32 bit. Am I perhaps missing a repository of straight 64 bit sources or something?

Sorry if this is just static... I'm overjoyed by the support of the platform in general, I would just like to take full advantage of it...

</de-lurk>

[hw-tph]

As far as I know, Debian (and hence Ubuntu) have traditionally shipped all 64bit SPARC software as 32bit, but with a 64bit kernel. Translation between 32bit software and the 64bit hardware is handled in the kernel, and using 64bit software (libraries, executables) is supposed to often be slower than using 32bit apps with the 64bit kernel. Search the mailing list archives (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com) for more detailed explanations.

OpenBSD on the other hand (I suppose the other BSD's as well) provide a full 64bit environment, for good or for worse. Both Debian and OpenBSD run very well on my aging Ultra10.


Håkan

[joga]

Try to install the packages libc6-sparc64 and libc6-dev-sparc64.

This at least allows you to build simple applications as 64bit binaries (using the -m64 compiler switch).

Unfortunately, 64bit versions of other libraries, e.g. libpthread, seem to be missing.