Rayiner Hashem <heliosc@mindspring.com> wrote:
+---------------
| > Changing MacOS-X to "64 bit" would have two notable breakages:
| >   - Applications currently written for a 32 bit environment would
| >     likely get confused;
|
| Not at all. Solaris does just fine with a mixed 32-bit/64-bit ABI.
| When they moved from SPARC v8 to SPARC v9, there was little hoopla.
| They recompiled the kernel for 64-bit support, added a set of legacy
| 32-bit system call entry points, and offered both 32-bit and 64-bit
| compiled libraries.
+---------------

SGI's Irix did the same. All of the Irix 64-bit kernels (basically,
Irix 6.5 is 64-bit on all platforms *except* the O2) support running
user binaries compiled in any of the "-64", "-n32", or "-o32" ABIs.


-Rob

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Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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