ppc64 builds

[Tom Lane]

Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> writes:
> By merging all the packages into one big collection we can't 
> segregate "Extras" and "Core" anymore for decisions such as build for ppc64 
> or not.  Every package will build for every arch unless explicitly told not 
> to, and if told, there is supposed to be bug regarding this according to our 
> guidelines (which you wanted IIRC).

AFAIK, not building a ppc64 version should not be a "bug", indeed it
likely should be the default.  32-bit code runs faster than 64-bit code
on that arch, and so the only reason to build 64-bit is if you really
need access to more than 4Gb of address space.  There are apps that need
that, but not all that many.

So my position is that libraries should generally be built in both
flavors (since they can't predict which flavor of executable might want
them) but applications should be built as 32-bit unless there's a good
reason why they need a 64-bit address space.

(If you ask me, the interesting question here is why the other arches
don't behave the same way.  Any reasonably competent hardware design
should have the property that doubling the bit-volume of traffic to
main memory has a penalty...)

			regards, tom lane