[Info-vax] c 7.3 - Why MAYLOSEDATA3 for long pointer math?

[David Froble]

Paul Sture wrote:
> On 2015-03-14, John Reagan <xyzzy1959 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Friday, March 13, 2015 at 11:16:58 PM UTC-4, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>
>>>    You seem to over-estimate my ability to persuade various
>>> keepers of open-source software to add piles of VMS-specific
>>> #pragma garbage to their source in order to work around such
>>> goofy behavior from a compiler on a system about which they
>>> typically care hardly a whit.  (And/or my willingness to
>>> try to explain why the difference between two 32-bit pointers
>>> should be a 64-bit entity.  I nearly wore out my welcome
>>> trying to deal with the not-NULL-terminated argv[] on Alpha
>>> with /POINTER_SIZE=64=ARGV.)  But thanks for the advice.
>> I get your point (and sarcasm).  For the /POINTER_SIZE=64=ARGV, that
>> was clearly a compiler bug that was fixed with an ECO.  Surely
>> open-source software isn't chocked full of conditionals to work around
>> platform or tool bugs?
> 
> I don't know about this particular case, but the lack of patch access
> for Hobbyists could be a very real limiting factor for this kind of
> problem.

We know what we had with HP.  Not much.  Perhaps we should wait to see 
how VSI handles these issues.

I'm hoping they already have a database in the works for recording every 
VMS contact they can get their hands on, and have catagories, such as 
hobbyist, developer, student, user, etc.  I'd hope they maintain contact 
with everyone in the database, and solicite responses.  A very close 
relationship with users of all types could be advantageous.  Keeping in 
contact with recent graduates could be one good thing.