Re: Why isn't there Visual Ada?

[Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <9612vb$9aa1@news.cis.okstate.edu>, dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu (David Starner) writes:
> On Fri, 9 Feb 2001 09:31:11 +0100, Tarjei T. Jensen 
> <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote:
>>
>>David Starner wrote
>>>
>>>A lot of software? Pretty much anything shipped with Debian or RedHat has
>>>been compiled and probably run on Alphas and other architectures.
>>
>>It does not neccessarily mean that the software work in 64 bit mode. Many, if
>>not all 64 bit machines support a 32 bit pointer environment with 32 bit
>>integers.
> 
> Debian does not compile its Alpha packages in that mode. (I don't believe
> an Alpha has that mode, or even if it does, that GCC for the alpha-linux-gnu
> supports using it. So I doubt Red Hat uses it either.)

Alpha has no 32 bit addressing mode in hardware.  A compiler that
is going to use 32 bit pointers will generate code that sign-extends
the 32 bit pointer when loading it into a 64-bit register.