size_t changes and 32/64-bit, kernel uio_resid type changed.

Hasso Tepper hasso at estpak.ee
Thu Aug 20 00:34:27 PDT 2009


Matthew Dillon wrote:
> size_t has been changed to unsigned long (and ssize_t to long).  I may
> revert this prior to the release if we hit pkgsrc problems.  The change
> will be kept for 64-bit machines.
> 
> The change on 32 bit machines seems to do a pretty good job generating
> compiler warnings on 32-bit machines for code that will break on
> 64-bit machines.  Because of this I think it is worth seeing how badly
> pkgsrc breaks with the change.  If it breaks too much we will revert
> it on 32 bit machines.

As it turns out, it breaks C++ ABI. IMHO it's too high cost for just to
get better warnings. And massive breakage of software on 64-bit machines
is thing of past. In fact I see opposite more nowadays - software written
on 64-bit platforms breaks on 32-bit machines ("Who uses 32-bit nowadays?
Embedded platforms?").


-- 
Hasso Tepper





More information about the Kernel mailing list