[PATCH v3 12/13] arm64: Kbuild: Remove vestigial big-endian support

Catalin Marinas catalin.marinas at arm.com
Tue Sep 22 08:17:35 PDT 2026


On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 04:10:17PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 11:24:36AM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 18, 2026 at 03:52:14PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> > > -choice
> > > -	prompt "Endianness"
> > > -	default CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN
> > > -	help
> > > -	  Select the endianness of data accesses performed by the CPU. Userspace
> > > -	  applications will need to be compiled and linked for the endianness
> > > -	  that is selected here.
> > > -
> > > -config CPU_BIG_ENDIAN
> > > -	bool "Build big-endian kernel"
> > > -	depends on BROKEN
> > > -	help
> > > -	  Say Y if you plan on running a kernel with a big-endian userspace.
> > > -
> > > -config CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN
> > > -	bool "Build little-endian kernel"
> > > -	help
> > > -	  Say Y if you plan on running a kernel with a little-endian userspace.
> > > -	  This is usually the case for distributions targeting arm64.
> > 
> > Running the checks through an LLM found that CONFIG_GVE depends on
> > X86 || CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN, so it won't be enabled anymore.
> > 
> > I think that's the only positive test of CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN.
> 
> Would you like me to add a '|| arm64' in there? I was a bit wary of doing
> so, given that I don't have a way to test it. Removing CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN
> forces the issue, somewhat.

Or turn the dependency into X86 || !CPU_BIG_ENDIAN.

Was arm64 the only one to define CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN before?

-- 
Catalin



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