Re: Can I use CRoaring library in Git?

[Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 08:18:14AM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
> On 7/18/22 7:48 AM, Abhradeep Chakraborty wrote:
> > I just got to know that CRoaring doesn't support Big Endian systems (till now) -
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/g/roaring-bitmaps/c/CzLmIRnYlps
> >
> > What do you think about this?
>
> Git cares enough about compatibility that that might be a
> deal-breaker for taking the code as-is. If we _did_ take it
> as-is, then we would need to not make it available on such
> machines using compiler macros.

I definitely agree here. If I'm understanding CRoaring's implementation
correctly, a bitmap written on a machine that uses big endian would be
unreadable on a little endian machine and vice-versa.

That's definitely *not* the case with the existing EWAH bitmaps, which
are readable on machines using either endianness, since we always write
numbers in network byte order, independent of machine endinaness.

(I suspect you know all of this already, but just stating here
explicitly for the benefit of the list).

Thanks,
Taylor