Re: Emacs on 64-bit architectures

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Dave Love <address@hidden>
> Date: 16 Oct 2001 18:34:01 +0100
> 
> I have in the past fixed most of the real problems indicated by
> compilation warnings in 64-bit mode on Solaris, Irix and Tru64 (and,
> possibly, Alpha GNU/Linux).

A couple of years ago, in a private copy I fixed many (though not all)
of the problems in porting Emacs to an environment where native
pointers are 32 bits wide but Emacs integers are 64 bits wide
(typically 'long long').  This allows Emacs to grow up to the 4 GB
maximum on 32-bit hosts like GNU/Linux x86.  Currently Emacs is
limited to a small fraction of 4 GB on such hosts, due to the need for
tagging the pointers within Emacs integers.

I suspended that project when it appeared that the patches didn't have
much chance of being incorporated into Emacs at the time, but I would
like to resume it when changes to Emacs are more feasible.  I think
the changes would make the Emacs code a bit more reliable even in its
current compilation model.

> Much of that has now bit-rotted and been junked, but some is probably
> still useful if anyone wants to merge it when I have time to recover
> it.  It's not worth re-doing yet, anyway.

Likewise.  I suspect that my fixes overlap with yours quite a bit.