[syslinux] Rock Ridge

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 04/01/2013 12:40 PM, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>>> The temptation to make use of the integer size waste in ISO 9660
>>> should be rejected.
> 
>> You mean the dual-endian numbers?  Yes, it is well known that the
>> bigendian stuff in ISO 9660 is broken on too many mastering platforms.
> 
> Indeed ?
> In that case we should let susp_rr.c interpret the little endian ones.
> Currently it reads the big endians (out of old habit).
> On the other hand, are the broken ones supposed to produce Rock Ridge ?
> 
> Shall i make a patch ?
> 

Yes, please use the littleendian ones.

Syslinux *does* provide the standard hton/ntoh macros for bigendian
access, but there is no accessor for littleendian at the moment (we
really should just adopt the Linux conventions.)

> (Actually  i meant the waste to store both byte sexes. Obviously a
>  lame compromise so that no operating system has a disadvantage
>  by having to convert.)
> 

Quite.  It made sense except so many mastering utilities were only
tested on DOS/Windows that Apple started byte-swapping the littleendian
bits even back in the PowerPC days.  So the bitendian stuff is generally
considered unusable -- Linux uses the littleendian data even on
bigendian platforms.

The other bit is that I/O is so much slower than CPU that it never made
any sense in the first place.

	-hpa