2005/9/30, Ronald G Minnich <[email protected]>: > Jim McKie wrote: > > > > ... are best served if there is a single choice widespread in the > > > emerging 64-bit systems. This removes a source of subtle errors in > > > porting to a 64-bit environment, and encourages more rapid > > > exploitation of the technology options. > > > > I think that's backwards, you get sloppy in a monoculture. > > yeah, good point. We kept our alphas alive here for a long time for one > reason: to make sure they kept us honest. For one thing, they would > really complain about bad alighment. Pentiums are way too kind when you > do something stupid like misalign a long or vlong. > > I was sad when it came time to turn them off. > > It's too easy to be stupid with just one architecture. > > ron
I just ran into an alignment bug yesterday doing credential passing over Unix Domain Sockets on amd64. Admittedly, I should have read the RFC (and more of the sunrpc code, which is where I stole mine from), but it is really easy to run into alignment issues when you're only using one architecture. Though I don't necessarily agree with Jim if I understand him correctly. I don't think that providing interfaces to make code compilation on systems of different bit sizes promotes `a sloppy monoculture.' --Devon
