On Wed, 14 May 2003, Thiemo Seufer wrote:
> > Why unfortunate? You use "32" and "64" for normal stuff, and the rest
> > for special cases ("n32" isn't really 32-bit and "o64" isn't really 64-bit
> > -- both lie in the middle).
>
> Exactly this is the sort of confusion which makes the naming unfortunate.
> -32 and -64 had never much to do with 32/64 bit but designate ABIs.
Well, "32" is 32-bit address/data and "64" is 64-bit address/data.
That's essentially pure 32-bit and 64-bit, respectively. Of course some
data format has to be emitted by tools, so there has to be an ABI
associated with each of these variants.
And "n32" and "o64" are 32-bit address/64-bit data -- you can use 64-bit
data, e.g. in gas, but you cannot use 64-bit addressing, e.g. a
section/segment cannot be bigger than 4 GB.
The naming isn't consistent, indeed -- there could be, say:
- "32" for 32-bit support -- unambiguous, since there is only one
variation,
- "64" for 64-bit support -- requiring an additional option for selecting
the ABI, bailing out without one (or defaulting to a preconfigured ABI).
Alternatively, there could be no "32" option -- tools configured for
"mips" would only emit 32-bit binaries and tools configured for "mips64"
-- 64-bit and mixed ones, depending on one of the "64", "o64" and "n32"
options.
Of course all options could be renamed to avoid confusion.
> > Additional aliases of the "n64" and "o32"
> > form would make more confusion, IMHO.
>
> I disagree.
I won't insist -- if people find this suitable for them, then it's great.
I won't use these additional aliases, so that's irrelevant for me.
--
+ Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+ e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
