ARM vs. ARMEL

[Irongeek]

I've noticed some DEBs are ARM, but some are labeled ARMEL. What exactly is the difference?

[gnuite]

Originally Posted by Irongeek

I've noticed some DEBs are ARM, but some are labeled ARMEL. What exactly is the difference?

As long as the debs are targeted for maemo, there is no difference.

Generally speaking, "armel" is a clarification of "arm" that reflects the endianness of the architecture. Technically, arm processors can be either little-endian ("armel") or big-endian ("armeb"). Nokia's arm processors are little-endian (similar to x86-based architectures).

[Serge]

Originally Posted by gnuite

Generally speaking, "armel" is a clarification of "arm" that reflects the endianness of the architecture. Technically, arm processors can be either little-endian ("armel") or big-endian ("armeb"). Nokia's arm processors are little-endian (similar to x86-based architectures).

That's not quite true, 'armel' and 'arm' are two different ABI for ARM (most of the differences are related to floating point): http://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort