Subj : Synchronet can maybe...?
To   : Khelms
From : Angus McLeod
Date : Sun Jul 17 2005 11:23 pm

  Re: Synchronet can maybe...?
  By: Khelms to The Lizard Master on Sun Jul 17 2005 17:04:00

 >   I don't understand why Synchronet will not run on OSX. OSX is Linux and I
 > **KNOW** Synchronet will run on LInux!

OSX isn't Linux.  But that isn't the issue.  The issue is "Endian-ness".

Apple hardware uses big-endian processors (IBM/Motorola), whereas Windows 
machines run on little-endian processors (Intel).  The processors store 
numerical data in RAM in different ways that involved the ordering of 
bytes.  (The exact details aren't really relevant.)  When these data are 
written to disk, they are written in the same format as stored in RAM, 
unless the application is specially coded to use one specific format 
(usually called Network byte order).

Synchronet does not (yet) have this type of code built in.

The result is that if a little-endian Synchronet system were to exchange 
data with a big-endian Synchronet system (and let's face it, Synchronet 
systems are all about exchanging data of one type or another, from mail 
packets on back), each system would see the data from the other system as 
corrupt.  Or worse, *not* see the data as corrupt, but accept it as valid, 
when in fact it WAS corrupt, due to the reversed byte-ordering used on the 
remote system.

So until the big-endian patches are completed for Synchronet, it isn't 
practical to run Synchronet on big-endian systems.  

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