[Info-vax] GCC for VMS, was: Re: fortran compiler roadmap?

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-earth.ufp> wrote:

(snip)

> Ok, I played with it a bit more this evening and I've figured it out.
> It turns out my hunch about the 32 bit versus 64 bit issue was right.
 
> It turns out DEC C by default is basically _still_ a 32 bit compiler
> with 64 bit addons (which I had not fully appreciated; I don't use
> DEC C all that much these days), but gcc (when built using the
> alpha64-dec-vms triplet) is a pure 64 bit compiler through and through.
 
> That makes the DEC C headers incompatible with gcc when you have, for
> example, pointers in structs and want to use that struct with existing
> functions in the DEC C RTL.

I haven't thought about this for a long time, but when Alpha first came
out, the C compilers used int for 32 bits and long for 64 bits.

As much software, especially IP, uses short for 16 and long for 32,
avoiding the uncertain (16 or 32 bit) int, lots of programs broke.
But I don't remember what happened after that.

-- glen