[fpc-pascal] Version 1.9.6[??] on the Mac.

[Jonas Maebe]

On 15 jan 2005, at 17:43, Peter H.M. Brooks wrote:

> It looks very much as if the code for the 1.9.6 compiler on Windows/XP 
> and Mac/OS is different - in fact it looks as if the Mac version is an 
> earlier release.

They are compiled from the same sources.

> How could this have happened? Should I download the compiler and 
> compile it from scratch, or is it likely that somebody will fix the 
> problem?

I will have a look at it.

> While on the subject, of compiling the compiler. I have a dual 64-bit 
> CPU on my Mac. Would it be possible to compile the compiler to run in 
> 64bit mode and be multi-threaded - and produce code that is 64bit and 
> multi-threaded?

There is no 64 bit powerpc code generator in the compiler yet. A 
compiler also does not "produce multi threaded code". There is some 
research on the topic of automatically turning single threaded code 
into multi threaded code, but generally I do not know of any production 
compiler which can automatically turn a generic single threaded program 
into a multi threaded program.

In the foreseeable future, it's still the programmer which has to 
explicitly write multi threaded code. This is far from trivial, and as 
a result writing both highly efficient and 100% multi threaded code is 
very difficult for all but the most simple examples.

> I know that Tiger will provide full 64bit operation (at least that is 
> promised),

No, it's not promised and it won't. No 64 bit versions of the standard 
GUI libraries will be provided, only of most (command line) generic 
unix libraries. See http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html

> but, in theory, the compiler should be able to produce 64bit code now. 
> If not, how long before this will be possible? Is it difficult to do?

I don't know when I will start with it, I'm currently still fixing 
things for the 32 bit code generator. Also, there are two different 64 
bit things you can do: 64 bit mathematics, and 64 bit memory spaces. 
The former can already be done under Mac OS X 10.3 (but is not 
supported by our compiler yet either), the latter will only be possible 
from 10.4 onwards (and initially not for GUI programs, as mentioned 
above).


Jonas