Re: [gentoo-dev] packages which won't support x32

[Mike Frysinger]

On Friday 05 October 2012 10:28:45 Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote:
> This is the case with dev-lang/v8: it doesn't build on x32
> (<https://bugs.gentoo.org/423815>), and upstream said they *won't*
> support x32
> (<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/v8-users/c-_URSZqTq8/7wHl095t2CMJ>).

i think you misread.  they have no current plans to support it.  there are (or 
at least were) people from intel working on it, although i don't know how far 
they got.

> Note that with v8 it's not just about getting v8 itself to compile, but
> also making it generate correct JIT code on x32, which would require
> substantial changes to v8 code (in fact, a whole new 40K arch port, see
> the discussion linked to above).

i think upstream is mistaken there for various reasons.  (1) it probably makes 
no sense to try and re-use the ia32 port for x32 and (2) the x32 and x64 port 
will most likely share a vast majority of code.  after all, the entire 
register set is available to you in x32 the same as it is in x64.

> Should dev-lang/v8 get p.masked on x32 profile, or is there some better
> way to handle it?

p.mask it for now makes sense if there is no portable/C implementation we can 
fall back onto
-mike