Ryan Gordon Wants To Bring Universal Binaries To Linux

wisesifu writes "One of the interesting features of Mac OS X is its 'universal binaries' feature that allows a single binary file to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel x86 platforms. While this comes at a cost of a larger binary file, it's convenient on the end-user and on software vendors for distributing their applications. While Linux has lacked such support for fat binaries, Ryan Gordon has decided this should be changed."

Comments

Not a particularly useful one.

[WindBourne]

As somebody pointed out, this does not scale. In the end, if somebody is really wanting multiple systems, then they can simple create a dvd with multiple types on it. There is another solution though. Back in the late 80's/early 90's, the unix world was concerned about how a companies could create binaries for multiple systems. The best solution, though not implemented, was to compile to a universal binary, and then trans-compile this to a different arch. In light of all the work that has taken place on Java and now parrot, it may make far more sense to do that. With that approach, it would be possible to have various compilers go to a single arch, and then create a new back-end on compilers to take it to various archs.