Re: [Xen-devel] 32/64-bit hypercall interface

[Hollis Blanchard <hollisb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:42 AM, Keir Fraser wrote:
> There's the rub: we don't expect to ever want to provide 32-bit x86 
> ABI compatibility on 64-bit x86 Xen. We will not be supporting 32-bit 
> paravirtualised guests on 64-bit x86 Xen, and we've taken the approach 
> of requiring separate 32- and 64-bit toolsets (which isn't too painful 
> on x86 since full-fledged 64-bit filesystems are quite easy to come 
> by).
That's great, if all you care about is x86. That is how Linux started 
of course, and look where we are now... I think portability and 
well-designed interfaces are nice things to think about earlier rather 
than later. :)
> Really this sounds to me like this is only going to be a problem for 
> ppc. That given, knocking up a translation script to import the 
> interfaces into your 32-bit toolchain does seem worthy of 
> consideration. It wouldn't allow you to use the same tool binaries on 
> both 32- and 64-bit ppc Xen, but I don't know how much you actually 
> care about that...
A translation script seems exceedingly difficult. A separate set of 
headers would be less so, but extremely fragile.
--
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center


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