I know this is "old" but is is still a *very real problem*...in fact we are writing software to get around this boneheadedness on Apple's part.
Essentially, it is harder to write x86 drivers, because you cannot debug them on a PPC via kdp, the kernel debugger.
You can't do this, because there is an endian bug. We know how to fix it. We can't.
So, we have had to result in writing a proxy that sits "in the middle" to do this work, when it would have taken 10x less time at this point to fix it in the kernel.
by Kai Cherry — Mar 10
Essentially, it is harder to write x86 drivers, because you cannot debug them on a PPC via kdp, the kernel debugger.
You can't do this, because there is an endian bug. We know how to fix it. We can't.
So, we have had to result in writing a proxy that sits "in the middle" to do this work, when it would have taken 10x less time at this point to fix it in the kernel.