[Vm-dev] egg sucking alert

[David T. Lewis]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 12:12:59PM +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>  
> On 11.12.2014, at 03:01, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > There's an oddity of a 32-bit VM compiled in 64-bit mode on a 64-bit machine.  I don't know of anyone using it.
> 
> This actually is *the* single most requested VM people want on Linux. It's just not quite stable because Dave has been working on it all on his own.
> 
> >   But on that config
> > 
> >         sizeof(int) == 4
> >         sizeof(long) == 8
> >         sizeof(sqInt) == 4
> > 
> > I'm in the process of providing a real 64-bit system with 61-bit SmallIntegers, immediate floating point, a segmented memory, etc, etc.  I am /not/ going to be held up trying to maintain the old 64-bit VM oddities.  A 32-bit VM on a 32-bit platform and a 64-bit VM on a 64-bit platform are enough, and expensive enough to maintain.
> 
> Dear VM. You have *one* job. Be virtual. Make my image run no matter what actual platform we are on.
> 
> Seriously, we need to be able to take an image from one platform and run it on another. If your particular VM cannot cover all platform-image combos, fine. You trade performance for cross-platformness. That's cool. But please don't make it harder for those of us who *do* value cross-platformness in futzing around with sqInt. It is *defined* as being a type of the image's word size, not the machines's word size.
> 
> Please do *not* use "long" in VM code. 
> 
> +1 to what Dave wrote. (*)
> 
> - Bert -
> 
> (*) The first word coming to my mind was the same one Dave used.

Um. Actually, I think I should apologize to Eliot for the tone of my message.
While I do think that is is "nonsense" to assume sqInt must be 32 bits, the
way I said it makes it sound like a personal attack. That is not my intent,
and I apologize.

Sorry,
Dave