[Openmcl-devel] OpenMCL Versions

[Phil]

Any language/application that includes its own compiler (i.e.  
OpenMCL) can't take advantage of the 'little checkbox'/ifdefs that  
other apps can.  They must to write the behind the scenes code to  
make the checkbox/ifdefs possible.  It's a tough situation as it's  
bad enough that there was one architecture switch, but now we're on  
the second in less than a year (I've always bought the rumor that  
Apple never wanted IA32 but had to use it from a product timing  
standpoint.)  I'm sure the Lispworks guys aren't any happier... they  
just got their IA32 product out the door a couple of weeks before WWDC.

The first generation of Intel machines has me experiencing a bit of  
deja vu as I seem to recall the first generation of PPC machines were  
rather quickly not capable of running later software releases due to  
differences/limitations between the 601 processors and it's  
successors.  It will likely not be to the same degree, but does seem  
like the same type situation.

On Aug 17, 2006, at 4:29 PM, Justin Fagnani-Bell wrote:

>  I'm surprised at the amount of work you
> estimate. I know hardly anything about the x86 ISA or what's involved
> in a Lisp implementation (I gather it's very low level). It's too bad
> that it can't be written so that a few #DEFs and compiler flags will
> produce either a IA32 or EM64T version.