Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:47:25 -0500 From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org> To: Kaya Saman <SamanKaya@netscape.net> Cc: Rob Farmer <rfarmer@predatorlabs.net>, FreeBSD-Questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Endianness Message-ID: <44hbqrm1w2.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> In-Reply-To: <4B4CE9B1.4040508@netscape.net> (Kaya Saman's message of "Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:29:21 %2B0200") References: <b025ceb71001121251m77ae380fs129699f7bd2a896e@mail.gmail.com> <20100112210427.GB18673@Grumpy.DynDNS.org> <4B4CE9B1.4040508@netscape.net>
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Kaya Saman <SamanKaya@netscape.net> writes: > David Kelly wrote: >> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:51:00PM -0800, Rob Farmer wrote: >> >>> I'm trying to create a port of an application which only works on >>> little endian systems and I'm trying to figure out how to set >>> ONLY_FOR_ARCHS. Wikipedia says PowerPC, Sparc, and IA64 are bi-endian >>> and the OS chooses the mode. I'm not familiar with these platforms - >>> I'm sure it has been answered somewhere, but I can't find it - which >>> FreeBSD archs are little/big endian? Thanks. >>> >> >> i386 is little endian. Would expect ia64 to be the same. >> >> > > SPARC is big endian. Or at least it used to be..... > > Power4,5,6 are all big endian too if I'm not mistaken. > > Correct me if I'm wrong but anything based around the CISC > architecture is big endian. As the original poster observed, PowerPC, Sparc and IA64 are all capable of being used in either endian setting. I checked endian.h, and it looks as though FreeBSD uses Sparc as big-endian, IA64 as little-endian, and PowerPC as whatever it picks up from gcc (probably big-endian, since the architecture does funny things with alignment in little-endian mode. My best advice, though, is to suggest that Mr. Farmer shouldn't assume that the application will work anywhere without actually trying it. -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/
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