Just checked, and I was a little off. We don't actually do this in the kernel,
we override it in the environment UNAME_ variables. All of our software that
wants to look at the machine arch uses uname to do it, so we go that route.
That way, we're not really lying to anything that wants to get the definitive
answer from the hw.machine architecture. I can't defend it any further than
that, maybe Peter or Paul or John can comment on it. I personally don't see one
way as being better than the other, as they both have potential problems. As
you noted in your previous email, it's an easy change that could have been done
long ago; maybe the fact that it hasn't points to a good reason not to.

Scott

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:57 PM, Kostik Belousov wrote: