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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: multiple-machine executables for Suns?
Message-ID: <2835@phri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Aug-87 22:08:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.2835
Posted: Mon Aug 10 22:08:45 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Aug-87 00:42:29 EDT
References: <1853@megaron.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 24

In article <1853@megaron.arizona.edu> whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell) talks
about whys and ways of merging Sun-[234] binaries into a single file to
make life easier on programmers.

	We've got a similar problem.  All our Suns are Sun-3's, but they
come in various flavors -- no hardware floating point, 68881 floating
point, and full-blown fpa.  We've got programs that we want to run on all
the machines.  Right now, we could compile with the -fswitch option, but I
understand that you get poor code that way.  You're better off making three
separate binaries (with -fsoft, -f68881, -ffpa respectively) and using the
right one on each machine if you can afford the disk space.  That's not so
bad for your own program where you can control which binary you run, but
how about something in a public bin that's going to be run by people who
may not even know what kind of machine they are on.  Seems like the
solution to to Bill's problem would solve mine too.

	BTW, does anybody know how hard it is to upgrade a non-68881 3/50
to add the 68881 chip?  Do I just have to buy some chips and plug them in?
Move some jumpers?  Send them back to Sun and pay them the difference in
the original purchase price to do the upgrade?
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016