2006.04.01 04:44 "[Tiff] WORDS_BIGENDIAN makes libtiff platform dependent (3.8.2) and you have to undefine it on MacTel", by ping shu

2006.04.03 15:21 "Re: [Tiff] WORDS_BIGENDIAN makes libtiff platform dependent", by Bob Friesenhahn

There's nothing like that in the (older) version I've been using (V3.6.1). In fact in tif_open.c, there doesn't appear to be any compile time endian dependent code. HOST_BIGENDIAN seems to be defined in tiffconf.h, but not used anywhere except tools/ras2tiff.c.

So it looks like compile time endian dependent code has been introduced at some stage. I would suspect it's quite unnecessary (ie. could have been coded differently.)

Based on prevailing evidence, I believe that you are correct. Here are the ChangeLog entries:

2005-06-03  Andrey Kiselev  <dron@ak4719.spb.edu>

         * libtiff/tif_open.c: Replace runtime endianess check with the compile

         time one.

2004-08-16  Andrey Kiselev  <dron@ak4719.spb.edu>

         * tools/ras2tiff.c: Fixed issue with missed big-endian checks as per
         bug http://bugzilla.remotesensing.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586

I expect that the BigTIFF support (planned for libtiff 4.0) is going to require more knowledge of its evironment since a 64-bit type needs to be identified. Some target-specific configuration will always be required.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/