Little-endian YDL?

[Tom Gall]

On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 03:36 PM, Robert Sanders wrote:

> Hey y'all,
>   First, I hope folks don't mind the cross-post.
>   Has anyone tried, or does anyone have any comments on a 
> *little-endian* version
> of YDL?  I believe the PowerPC can operate in both little-endian and 
> big-endian modes, and
> I think I've seen reports from gcc of little-endian powerpc builds. 
> I'm wondering about this
> because one of the tools we use at work "equates" linux with 
> little-endian byte ordering, and
> we have several algorithms that are counting on this ordering.  These 
> algorithms have been
> more-or-less hand crafted in fortran and C expecting the x86 
> little-endian byte ordering.  I've
> gotten this tool to compile and run nicely under big-endian YDL, but 
> haven't had the time
> to try and recode these little-endian required apps for big-endian.

Greetings Rob,

Trying to attempt such a goal would be quite cumbersome. Much more so 
then just a little work
on the part of your algorithms.

There would be rebuilding a whole lot of open source software and 
clubbing it over the
head to convince that it even tho you've passed powerpc-linux to 
configure, you really meant
little endian.

It's just not worth it...

Regards,

Tom

>   I'm not trying to get into a 'big-endian' vice 'little-endian' war, 
> just wondering what the YDL
> community thinks of the merits of a YDL little-endian version.  Could 
> it work on the various
> PowerPC platforms out there, other porting issues, etc.

Tom Gall - [Embedded] [PPC64 | PPC32] Linux
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