Hi John, On Wed, 21 May 2025 at 04:15, John Klos <[email protected]> wrote: > Should Linux maintain a 32 bit platform that has alignment issues because > programmers make bad assumptions?
Linux (the kernel) does maintain it, and bug fixes are backported to stable trees. The upstream kernel (outside the arch/m68k dir) has no problem fixing whatever alignment issues that pop up. > Your argument is that ABI breakage is death, and that projects and the > world are better when we tell people to fix their broken code. "we don't break user space" is the #1 rule in the kernel[1]. > I agree that ABI breakage is a huge hurdle. At the same time, the ABI will > change to fix 32 bit time. Is there any good reason to NOT switch to 32 > bit alignment at the same time the time changes are made? I can't think of > any reason. > > So can we all agree that there's no reason to not change alignment when > the time changes are done? According to Andeas, here is no change to be made for 64-bit time_t[2]. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wg-6jYZ=bJWdyBR=n8qofwhtzzdzsuupgfw+ngcv-p...@mail.gmail.com [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected] 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
