64-bit windows version?

[skaller]

On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 11:40 -0400, Isaac Dupree wrote:
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> skaller wrote:
> > (MS and gcc C++ are incompatible).
> 
> is this still true? GCC has been standardizing its C++ ABI for a while,
> and I think there actually weren't any ABI changes noted between 4.1 and
> 4.2 for most platforms (I don't know if MS C++ is compatible with that
> common ABI though).  I could be confused here though.

I believe so, but I could be wrong. MSVC++ uses different name mangling
as well as function call/register usage conventions on AMD64 I think,
but I'm not sure since I only have Cygwin g++, which is a very old
compiler now (3.3 or something?)

As I understand it, gcc is highly configurable wrt to the back end,
still, stuff like C++ exception handling etc is quite hard to 
parametrise. It would be very cool if g++ could replace MSVC++,
but I wouldn't hold your breath.

MS now uses 'assemblies' for dynamic linkage, which is an
advanced version of the common Unix *.so.1.2+ symlinks
hackery, so just as g++ can create compatible C++ dlls
it is going to be out of date on the dynamic loading method ..
by the time it catches up on that, most MS applications will
probably be .NET based and binaries will be reserved for
privileged users and device drivers (I'm not kidding on that 
either -- MS does have a few security problems and .NET
is probably the vehicle they'll use to solve them).

The problem for software like GHC is that it can't afford to trail
behind development of Open Source support technology like C compilers.
The lag is too great: to be successful it needs to be on the bleeding
edge .. after all from a *programming language* viewpoint it is
bleeding edge software.

Ocaml has jumped onto the bleeding edge with F#... ok, they're not
the same exactly, and the fork is unpleasant, but F# is already
a .NET language, so MS developers in a position to take some
risks might have a go with it.

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net