Hello,
I've just committed a change to "pkgsrc" that will make the 32-Bit
Application Binary Interface (ABI) the default under Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
"pkgsrc" was previously mirroring the behaviour of Apple's
development tools Xcode and created 64-Bit binaries on system that
are able to execute them.
1.) Why was this change done?
While moving to 64-Bit is the right long term choice it causes
a lot of problems in the short term. There are a lot of software
packages that don't work in 64-Bit mode under Mac OS X at the
moment, e.g. SDL or Python version 2.5.
To avoid a poor user experience "pkgsrc" therefore defaults to
the 32-Bit that the majority of software packages support.
2.) Can I still use the 64-Bit ABI?
Yes, you can do that by boot-strapping using the "--abi 64" option
or by adding "ABI= 64" to "/usr/pkg/etc/mk.conf". You will however
experience problem if you try to switch an existing 32-Bit installation
to 64-Bit (or vise versa) without rebuilding all of the packages.
3.) How do I find out whether I'm using the 32-Bit or 64-Bit ABI right now?
Please use the command "file /usr/pkg/sbin/pkg_info". If it reports
that "pkg_info" is a "Mach-O executable i386" you are using the
32-Bit ABI. If it reports a "Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64"
you are using the 64-Bit ABI. If you want to continue using the
64-Bit ABI add "ABI= 64" to "/etc/mk.conf", please. If you want
to switch to 32-Bit you will have to bootstrap again and to
rebuild your packages afterwards.
I hope this information will avoid further confusion.
Kind regards
--
Matthias Scheler http://zhadum.org.uk/
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