The project I work on compiles for eight different target architectures. Debian supports at least fourteen. Every program in a Linux distribution which has any

The project I work on compiles for eight different target architectures. Debian supports at least fourteen. Every program in a Linux distribution which has any inline assembly code means extra work that has to be done to support porting that distro to a new architecture, and code that has to be audited if an existing architecture gets a new calling convention (like x86's "x32", or ARM "hardfloat"). A portable 10-line implementation that gets reviewed and tested once is often going to be better than half a dozen 5 line architecture specific implementations.