Re: Darwin as primary platform

[Geoffrey Keating <geoffk at apple dot com>]

On 22/09/2006, at 1:54 PM, Jack Howarth wrote:

> Geoff,
>     How would the powerpc-darwin -m64 support and x86_64 fit into this
> scheme? Would they be considered variants of the powerpc-darwin and
> i386-darwin architectures and thus primary platforms as well? Or
> would they be secondary platforms? With Apple's 64-bit commitment
> in Leopard, they should at least be secondary with an eye to making
> them primary in gcc 4.4.

They are not platforms at all; they are command-line flags.  They  
would be treated the same way as any similar command-line flag on a  
primary platform, say -m64 on AIX.  The importance of any problem  
with them would be determined based on things like how much code is  
affected, the impact on users, the dangerousness of the fix, etc.

I caution that Apple has made no firm commitment to 64-bit GUI  
support, or any other feature, in Leopard.  As the small grey print  
at the bottom of <http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/64bit.html>  
says, "All features referenced in the Mac OS X Leopard Sneak Peek are  
subject to change."

From a tools perspective, the additional 64-bit support in Leopard  
mostly translates to 64-bit support in objective-C and objective-C++,  
and there doesn't seem to be any especial problem with this even in 4.2.

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