4 ms·

There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, sta

There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). I think that trying 'oddball' platforms indeed help shaking out bugs. But if that's the goal (rather than supporting the five users that still use such hardware), wouldn't it be more attractive to build pseudo-platforms in an emulator that simulate other architecture choices, and run it on fast and easy-to-get x86_64 hardware?

IcePic 10y ago
You don't find races and bugs on emulators the same way as on real hardware. Also, if you do find a bug in your emulated environment, how much time would you spend wondering if the emulator is bad or your code? Also, there is a real chance that the emulator would let stuff pass (like allowing code make memory or bus access on odd address or some other restraint) which really shouldn't be allowed and you would not notice it.