[apologies for multiple reception. if it's possible to subscribe to this list with several posting email addresses for just a single reception address, someone please point me at the relevant stuff]

VM Hackers,

The trunk of the unix tree is now at (an unstable, monotonically advancing) 3.8a-1. I'm telling you this because there are significant widespread changes since 3.7-7. In particular, the core Unix VM support is the result of merging 3.7-7 with my previous 64-bit support code released a while ago. This 64-bit compatible code is now the official support code for Unix versions 3.8 and onwards.

While waiting for Tim to pull the changes Dan and I sent him into the Interpreter and CCodeGenerator, I've pre-emptively checked in Cross/vm/sqMemoryAccess.h, which is a slightly modified copy of the one I released with the original 64-bit code. It allows the support code to use the new type names, but still compile with a 'src' tree generated from a 32-bit Interpreter/CCodeGenerator. There may be a few unexpected warnings about mixing integers and pointers for the moment, but these are harmless.

Needless to say, if your support code is still of the old 32-bit flavour, it won't ever include this header file.

Note that this does not mean you can compile a 64-bit VM for 32/64-bit hardware, nor does it mean you can run a 32-bit VM on 64-bit hardware. The only thing it kludges into working order is compiling 32-bit 'src' to run on 32-bit hardware, mixing 'int's in the generated stuff with 'sq{Int,Long,Whatever}'s in the support code. For all four combinations of 32/64 VM + 32/64 h/w to work, we have to wait for our 64-bit image changes to percolate into the released image-side stuff.

Backwardly-compatible cheers, Ian