On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@chello.at> wrote:
King InuYasha wrote:
> I just saw this article about an effort to create Universal binary style
> ELF binaries for Linux, and I thought that this would be something to
> watch, so that Fedora could integrate both x86-32 and x86-64 into single
> DVD sets.
>
> http://icculus.org/fatelf/

Yuck!!! Please don't infect GNU/Linux with this completely braindead crap!
This wastes a lot of disk space and download bandwidth and probably also
increases loading times for NO reason whatsoever. It also doubles the build
times for any and all software. Just figure out what arch your machine is
and install the correct package for your arch! Fat binaries are a method to
make crappy binary-only software distribution easier, they have no room on a
Free Software system. Let the Mac folks keep their fat crap and leave our
binaries as native for the appropriate arch!

       Kevin Kofler


I dunno, it could be useful for Live CDs/USBs. It would let you pack multiple arches onto a single LiveCD/USB.

You sound like one of those crazy people that disregard everything that may slightly help proprietary software. It's probably possible to strip out arches when they become unneeded, if so desired. I know it is possible under Mac OS X to do that. If you had a system that had extra arches you didn't need, you probably could just go and strip them out to save disk space.

There isn't much proof to your statement about loading fat binaries. I don't notice a slow down in load times of Universal binaries on my Mac, but I do notice the disk space. As it is, Snow Leopard now uses Universal binaries to pack x86_32 and x86_64 into a single application container and can strip out PowerPC binary code.

Don't knock it till you try it...