.beam difference between builds and misc HiPE questions

[Kostis Sagonas]

 > Another question, can I use .beam files produced in a no-hipe build with the
 > VM produced in a HiPE build?  I suppose so too but I can be sure of this if
 > I'm not sure of the previous question.

The answer is YES.

 > Could enabling HiPE break the build of Erlang/OTP if there is a bug in HiPE
 > on some specific platform?  If it's the case I'll need to build HiPE outside
 > the main package to make sure people using that platform at least have the
 > interpreted VM.  After building and rebuilding that package so many times,
 > I'd think this is not the case.

Indeed, this is not the case.

More generally, there should not be any `bad' interaction between HiPE & OTP.

Even .beam files containing native code can be happily loaded in a non
hipe-enabled Erlang/OTP system.  The .beam files are `fat' and contain
both native & bytecode.  On the other hand, the native code is in general
not tranferable -- even between systems of the same architecture.

Kostis