On Monday 24 July 2017, Joachim Fahrner wrote:
> Am 2017-07-24 20:34, schrieb Hendrik Boom:
> > How much source code actually cares whether pointers are 32 or 64
> > bits?
>
> Clean written code should not care about pointers or integers are 32
> or 64 bit or byte order. Code written in a higher language should run
> on any hardware, otherwise I call it "defect".

In theory you may have right but in practice I guess most currently used
code would not run correctly on 16bit machines.

In practice you have to run and test the code on all target
architectures to keep it portable. Even though I don't use i386 systems
anymore since more than 10 years, As a developer I really like i386
because I can compile and even run it on my "normal" x86_64 systems to
keep my code 32bit compatible, which is useful for any other 32bit
archs (arm, mips, whatever). Thats why I appreciate any distro, still
offering i386 libs.

> And concerning the memory usage: don't forget, mixing 32/64 bit
> shared libraries doubles the memory needs. Sharing of libraries only
> makes sense if they are really shared, otherwise you can link
> programs static.

> BTW: That's an illness on windows, where every
> application brings it's own "shared" library version x.y, that never
> becomes really shared.

I get your point but it's only true if the each application runs only
once at the same time.

cu,
Rudi