[maemo-developers] ARM9 vs ARM11 architecture for bora (was: maemo-mapper crashes on os2007 hacker edition)

[From: Rainer Dorsch]

Am Dienstag, 10. April 2007 10:01 schrieben Sie:
> As you can see, almost 99% of OS2007 doesn't use any ARM11 specific
> features, since you can run it on 770 without recompiling.

Hmm ...99% of the lines of code or 99% of all applications?

Seems that maemo-mapper and apps mentioned in the thread "IT2007 Hacker 
Edition - First impression" have been incompatible between os2007 and os2007 
hacker edition. So I do not believe in 99% of all applications!

**I think having the N770 hacker edition user trying out an application from 
bora and when it is not starting up (for whatever reason) let him recompile 
it in scratchbox is not a good solution.**

I simple solution would be to manually maintain a list of apps which were 
compiled for the ARM 11 instruction set architecture and need to be 
recompiled for the ARM 9 architecture of the N770. Well a manual list which 
needs to be looked up manually and then implemented in apt/preferences in the 
best case....rrmmmmpf#

Debian found better solutions for similar problems before:

-> 686 vs. 586 in i386: use the least common denominator, i.e. produce apps 
which run on all platforms. In the Nokia case: compile for ARM9

-> amd64 vs. i386: using the least common denominator was not acceptable. Too 
much HW capabilites would have been unused. A new architecture (amd64) was 
introduced into the repository. For the nokia case that would translate into
dists/bora/free/armel-9    (for the n770)
dists/bora/free/armel-11 (for the n800)
dists/bora/free/binary-i386

Not sure if any of these Debian solutions works for the Nokia case, but the 
situation we have right now needs improvement...maybe there are better ways 
to achieve this.

Thanks,
Rainer

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Rainer Dorsch
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