64bit GNUstep Was: Problem with Cenon

[Fred Kiefer]

On 26.01.2013 11:10, David Chisnall wrote:
> I'm having problems building AppKit code on 64-bit systems at the
> moment because we haven't done the int -> NSInteger switch in a load
> of places where it's required.  Do we have a plan for a clean
> transition for this, or do we just have a break-the-ABI release?
>
> I can commit some changes that to the translation, but everything on
> 64-bit platforms will need recompiling afterwards.

I am not sure I understand this mail correctly. Are you revering to 
places in GNUstep gui where we aren't properly using NSInteger and 
NSUInteger? In this case we should fix the code. If this once more 
breaks the ABI it is a shame, but we have to do it anyway to get the 
code consistent.

If you are revering to application or library code outside of core 
things get more complicated. Apple allows the code to use 32bit versions 
of the core bundles even on 64bit system. I don't know how they do it 
exactly, most likely they have two versions of the library and link in 
the correct one depending on the settings. For the headers they use a 
define, I think it is LP64 to decide how NSInteger gets defined. GNUstep 
base does so unconditionally, depending on some compiler settings (or 
rather depending on the installed headers, that on my machine use 
__x86_64__ to decide the word size and the definition of intptr_t 
depends on that)

We could try to make this more flexible in GNUstep base. Is this what 
you are suggesting?

Fred