Re: [RFC/PATCH 00/59] Make common x86 arch area for i386 and x86_64

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Wed Mar 14 2007 - 08:49:50 EST



* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> We've started to notice that the i386 build gets broken now that most
> developers tend to have newer CPU's and run mostly on x86-64 (and yes,
> that's me too), and while I don't think unifying things will guarantee
> that doesn't happen in the future, it will hopefully at least help
> make it not get much *worse*.

actually, even for 'cutting edge' testers, the number of 32-bit x86
systems outnumber the number of 64-bit test-systems by a factor of 5.
For distributions with real users, the ratio is closer to 1:10...

so i typically get bugs reported on 32-bit first, and for 64-bit it is
usually only reported if the bug is 64-bit /only/. That basic property
is true for both upstream, -rt and rawhide kernels.

Andi's x86 merge tree /does/ break quite often on 32-bit, but that's not
really due to testers, that's due to Andi being primarily the 64-bit
maintainer ;)

Ingo
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