[M3devel] files larger than 2gig

[Olaf Wagner]

Quoting Jay <jay.krell at cornell.edu>:

>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:10:05 -0400
>> From: hendrik at topoi.pooq.com
>> To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
>> Subject: Re: [M3devel] files larger than 2gig
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 12:58:45PM -0400, Tony Hosking wrote:
>>>
>>> Yuck. Why not decompose in the backend?
>>
>> However we do it, large files should "just work" on systems that can
>> handle them.
>>
>> -- hendrik
>
>
> It should be LONGINT.
> I'll try to get to it.
> It might be a slightly breaking change, depending on where the   
> INTEGER size is exposed.
>
>
> That shouldn't be difficult and will address all but one platform.
> I'll try to get back to revisiting LONGINT support on NT386.
> Then it might be interesting, though not easy, to port that backend
> to more platforms. :)
> One reason to do all those wierdo ports is to set a bar for
> what an integrated backend should strive for. :)
> Or then again again again, a C generator. That way, there'd be a chance
> of "no more porting work". If the IL was slightly abstracted, we could
> just generate portable C and release just one
> portable source-ish package for all platforms.
> There could still be binary packages for people that don't build from source,
> but all platforms would just be a C compiler away.

It has been done that way in the first SRC compilers. m3make was just
a wrapper generating makefiles, and the compiler produced C as an intermediate
language. It was found to be rather suboptiomal for various reasons AFAIR:
performance of the compiler, performance of the produced code (missing
optimizations), missing C standardization (what exactly is portable C???), ...

Of course I wouldn't object a C generating backend at all, but we should
very carefully compare its benefits with the existing backends before
abandoning any of them.

Olaf
-- 
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