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

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On 10 Jan 2024 00:15:59 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> In article <unkjij$26ao8$1 at dont-email.me>,
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo at nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>On 9 Jan 2024 22:56:47 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>
>>> In article <unkdkr$25et9$1 at dont-email.me>,
>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo at nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>On Tue, 9 Jan 2024 21:06 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman
>>>>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I was presuming that the 64-bit VMS APIs would have 64-bit specific
>>>>> names ...
>>>>
>>>>Or use the same names, and just link against different versions of the
>>>>libraries, located in suitable architecture-specific directories, as
>>>>selected by the build script.
>>> 
>>> Linux did it with different versions in different directories with the
>>> same name.  Solaris did it with different names.  In the end the
>>> Solaris route was much less frustrating to debug.
>>
>>Solaris never ran on 2 dozen different architectures though, did it?
> 
> Not at the same time.  Only two at the same time.

Note how a distro like Debian does it, with its “multiarch” concept. This 
allows multiple installations of the same distro version, for different 
architectures, to share large (at least readonly) parts of their root 
filesystems. Debian supports something close to a dozen different 
architectures, last I checked.

What alternative to architecture-specific library directories would there 
be, that would scale to such a setup?