64Bit compatibility warnings

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, January 21, 2012 07:53:51 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Trass3r" <un at known.com> wrote in message news:op.v8flqsr63ncmek at enigma...
> 
> >> Couldn't it be handled by a special switch on 64 bit compilers, and
> >> disabled normally?
> > 
> > Theoretically yes, but it would destroy the original intention.
> > Ensuring 64 bit compatibility is as easy as compiling with -m64 from
> > time
> > to time, but some people can't be bothered.
> 
> Or they're on windows.

Then you've got the added fun of whether it builds on Linux or any other Posix 
system _anyway_. To really know whether something is going to work on a system 
other than the one you're developing on, you need to buid it and run into on 
other systems (or built it _for_ other systems and then run it there in the 
case of cross-compiling).

It would be nice if size_t were handled better, but a flag for 64-bit would 
only solve _one_ of the problems related to writing code on one system and 
trying to run it on another, and that's assuming that it actually solved the 
problem for 64-bit, which it wouldn't, since you could still have version 
differences beyond size_t. It would just help with the very common (and 
understandably annoying) issue of using size_t correctly on 32-bit box such 
that it would work on a 64-bit box.

So, it may very well be worth having something in the compiler flag obvious 
mis-use of size_t, but it doesn't really solve the problem, just mitigate it.

- Jonathan M Davis