On Sep 22, 2005, at 8:32 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:
no, this is good news. I've had to fix so much broken software on my
alpha becuase of sloppy typecasting it isn't even funny.
I've run into similar headaches with my amd64 machine. If you forget
to prototype a function that returns a pointer, you crash.
sizeof(int) is not the same as sizeof(long) or sizeof(void*). Etc.
This definitely IS good news. Now perhaps people will start paying
attention to the code they write. I've been using exclusively 64-bit
systems for the better part of the last decade...I can't count the
number of times I've had to clean up messes from the "all the world's
an x86 running Linux" crowd.
Fortunately for me, in recent years my focus has moved in the
direction of using software more like the gEDA suite, which usually
seem to be written and maintained by more experienced folk who tend not
to make such messes. :) When I was in the ISP business, having to get
more "general" packages built on platforms like Alphas and UltraSPARCs
was like pulling teeth due to the "if it works, it's correct" mentality
that pre-4.0 GCC has unfortunately fostered. I am VERY pleased to hear
that it's becoming more strict.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "You'll have to be a lot more specific than
'that
Cape Coral, FL girl last night.'" -Ted McFadden
