[tex-live] TeX Live 2016 binaries status, and TeX Live 2016 reaches some Linux distributions

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Vincent Torri <vincent.torri at gmail.com> asks on Sun, 12 Jun 2016 07:09:34 +0200:

>> openindiana is mentioned only for i386 CPU and not x86_64. Is it normal ?

Yes, it is normal.

The SPARC architecture that has been the core CPU of Solaris since the
introduction of SPARC in 1987 as Sun Microsystems' version of the
Berkeley RISC design, replacing Sun's previous use of the Motorola
68000 family processors, has been a mixed 32-bit and 64-bit system
since SPARC V8 in 1990.  

It is possible to compile software on Solaris (and its OpenSolaris
relative, OpenIndiana) in either mode, but the compiler default for
both SPARC and Intel x86/x86-64 CPUs, has always been 32-bit mode.
Indeed, a check of the executables in /bin (== /usr/bin) on both CPU
platforms shows that all are 32-bit files.

Thus, we have

    % cc hello.c && file a.out
    a.out: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, SPARC32PLUS, V8+ Required, 
    version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

    % cc hello.c && file a.out
    a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1,
    dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped, uses FPU

    % cc -m64 hello.c && file a.out
    a.out: ELF 64-bit MSB executable, SPARC V9, total store ordering,
    version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

    % cc -m64 hello.c && file a.out
    a.out: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1,
    dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped, uses FPU FXSR SSE

For typesetting applications, consider that a typical book is about
1MB of text, I find it hard to imagine that an address space of more
than 4096MB would be needed for the majority of users, especially
because TeX processes only a page at a time.  The memory hogs are
instead the document viewers that try to hold everything in memory for
rapid navigation.

Nevertheless, if there is a feeling that a 64-bit build of TeX Live
2016 for OpenIndiana would be of interest, I can certainly try it.

The Open Community Software Project (OpenCSW)

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCSW

that provides an archive of about 3850 open-source and free software
packages built for Solaris and OpenIndiana currently has TeX Live, but
only the 2012 version.  Thus, as I reported on Saturday on this list,
major software channels for easy installation of binary distributions
are often several years behind.

By offering TeX binaries for as many platforms as possible, we can
bring the end-user community up to the latest available TeXware.

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