Roland Mainz writes: > James Carlson wrote: > > Charles Wright writes: > > > I'm confused by what you mean when you say > > > "Most Solaris user space applications are not 64 bit clean" > > > > Many applications we ship are compiled in 32-bit mode because: > > > > - They usually don't require any of the expanded address space or > > special features of 64-bit-ness, so compiling specially provides > > little or no benefit. > > Erm... I disagree in this case. AFAIK bugster has many bugs with issues > related to timestamps, largefile handling, inablity to handle datasets > >= 2GB etc. etc. making such applications 64bit ones would fix this kind of > >problems.
First of all, large file handling does not require compilation in 64-bit mode. See lf64(5) and lfcompile(5) for various ways to access large files in 32-bit applications. If people are unable to use those interfaces properly, then those issues are just plain bugs, not excuses to recompile the world as 64-bit in order to "fix" it. Secondly, the timestamp issue is a bit of an oddity. I agree that when the large file compilation environments were created, they probably should have addressed 64-bit timestamps as well. That was arguably a mistake. Fortunately, it's rarely a serious issue, as we haven't crossed the 2038 boundary yet, and thus we're effectively talking about dealing with corrupted files on non-standard file systems where the result is an unexpected EOVERFLOW. Even there, it's something that could be worked around without recompiling the universe. And, finally, none of what you've said actually disagrees with me in any substantial respect. The fact that *some* applications do in fact need to run as 64-bit does not in any way invalidate the assertion that *most* do not, and that this is the reason that they have not been changed to 64-bit. /bin/true is going to work just fine as a 32-bit binary. It'll probably still work great 100 years from now. :-/ -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
