Re: machine/platform separation

["Thomas E. Spanjaard" <tgen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon 'corecode' Schubert wrote:
> but why wouldn't we use the default 
> name for the default platform?

At least 'i386' sucks as platform name. It's not true anymore that all 
IA32 (yes, that's the CPU arch name Intel actually uses these days) CPUs 
live in PC machines, and picking 'i386' as name for the machine with a 
PC BIOS and an IA32 CPU is just confusing baggage. What would you name 
the EFI+IA32 machine? efi386? mac386 (hah, wait 'til other manufacturers 
start shipping IA32 boxen with EFI firmware)? And the (hypothetical?) 
case of OFW+IA32?

> for one, i am absolutely opposing the 
> creation of a platform "pc64".  this will be amd64.

What about EFI+AMD64? I can sorta live with CPUnames ia32 and amd64, but 
not arch/machine/platformnames i386 and amd64. Those names do NOT cover 
the actual arch/machine/platform. I am sure you agree that naming 
machines 'i386' is stupid in retrospect.

Ofcourse, the rest of the world is still retarded, and we need to deal 
with that. But going for 'i386' and 'amd64' is basically going for the 
lowest common denominator. Sure, it's 'common practice', a 'de facto 
standard', but it's WRONG.

Cheers,
--
        Thomas E. Spanjaard
        tgen@netphreax.net

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