[Info-vax] 64-bit (was Re: New CEO of VMS Software)

[John Dallman]

In article <unk7ka$24i3c$1 at dont-email.me>, seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid
(Stephen Hoffman) wrote:

> On 2024-01-06 15:30:00 +0000, John Dallman said:
> > First, complete the 64-bit API, after all these years. It's a 
> > fairly well-defined task, but I don't know how big it is.
> There's no way to do that without breaking source-level 
> compatibility, and probably not without also doing a migration to a 
> parallel set of 64-bit APIs.
> 
> Basically, the image activator examines the image and decides which 
> implementation to activate within; the existing 32- and 64-bit 
> implementation, or 64-bit new.

I was presuming that the 64-bit VMS APIs would have 64-bit specific names,
as the 64-bit versions that already do, as best I know. That would means
there were a full set of APIs, both 32-bit and 64-bit, at OS level, in
the same implementation. 

Cross-compiled MACRO-32 code could then gradually transition between them,
by source adaptation. Higher-level languages could offer compiler options
for selecting APIs. 

Or does this not make sense? 

John