Re: Is detecting endianness at compile-time unworkable?
From: Junio C Hamano <hidden>
Date: 2018-07-30 18:32:47
Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason [off-list ref] writes:quoted
And, as an aside, the reason we can't easily make it better ourselves is because the build process for git.git doesn't have a facility to run code to detect this type of stuff (the configure script is always optional). So we can't just run this test ourselves.It won't help those who cross-compile anyway. I thought we declared "we make a reasonable effort to guess the target endianness from the system header by inspecting usual macros, but will not aim to cover every system on the planet---instead there is a knob to tweak it for those on exotic platforms" last time we discussed this?
Well, having said all that, I do not think I personally mind if ./configure learned to include a "compile small program and run it to determine byte order on the build machine" as part of "we make a reasonable effort" as long as it cleanly excludes cross building case (and the result is made overridable just in case we misdetect the "cross-ness" of the build).