[Info-vax] 32/64 bits on VMS, was: Re: problem with 64-bit pointers in C

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-01-31 18:41:44 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2018-01-31, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> 
>> The bad choice was OpenVMS V7.0, and it was a massively short-sighted 
>> decision, and a decision that can and will continue to haunt OpenVMS 
>> developers and will continue to have repercussions until the day y'all 
>> decide to deprecate and finally, eventually, hopefully entirely remove 
>> it.
>> 
>> Ditch the 32-/64-bit compatibility and allow us to migrate our code to 
>> a flat 64-bit environment.  All languages.   The design and 
>> implementation was brilliant and wonderfully compatible, but using the 
>> 64-bit results are just... difficult.
> 
> It's a pity that images couldn't have instead been built as either a 
> purely 32 bits or purely 64 bits image as you can do elsewhere. That 
> way, you could keep the existing 32 bit images, but if you wanted 64 
> bits you had to convert all your code to run in a 64 bit environment 
> and to use 64-bit libraries.

Ayup; with updated-for-saner-behaviors-and-saner-defaults 64-bit calls 
where those are available and applicable, since we're already fixing 
the source code to move to 64-bit.

The 32-/64-bit stuff was the best available compromise from back around 
V7.0, but it's rather a mess when looking back at the decisions from a 
couple of decades beyond them.

Those decisions largely resulted in 64-bit addressing being unused, 
save as a checkbox feature, and save for those specific apps that 
really required it and where folks went out of their way to use it.

Many tools never followed.  BASIC, for one.

Ah, well.  We're apparently all supposed to still be using FORTRAN 77 
and COBOL and 32-bit addressing and dumping on our younger staffers 
because reasons.    So there's that.



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