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Conference turris::sdl

Title:SDL Notes
Notice:SDL is FREE on the freeware CD. DIR/KEY=KIT for kit info.
Moderator:STAR::DIPIRRO
Created:Sat Jan 25 1986
Last Modified:Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:491
Total number of notes:1662

488.0. "What's the difference between V3.2-12 and SDL/VAX (ALPHA_SDL)" by EDSCLU::GARROD (IBM Interconnect Engineering) Wed Mar 26 1997 11:05

    Are there any incompatible differences in going from the:
    
    V3.2-12 SDL on OpenVMS VAX
    
    to using the ALPHA_SDL on VAX through the SDL/VAX command?
    
    I'm thinking of moving our build systems flly to the new ALPHA_SDL
    but am reluctant to do so due to fear of lurking incompatibilities.
    
    One thing I have found is that an item described with the LONGWORD
    qualifier passed through the C backend comes out as:
    
    long int foo;
    
    using V3.2-12 but comes out as:
    
    int foo;
    
    using ALPHA_SDL on VAX (ie SDL/VAX).
    
    Of course on a VAX they're identical. But on our build system some
    of the outputs of these SDL's are using on the DIGITAL UNIX side
    of our build where of course sizeof(long int) is 8 not 4.
    
    Does anybody have a definitive list of incompatibilities like this?
    
    Thanks,
    
    Dave
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488.1I don't *think* the list exists...STAR::DIPIRROWed Mar 26 1997 12:5616
    	I don't think such a list exists. If it does exist, I'd like to
    know about it. There were a LOT of changes made to Alpha SDL,
    especially in the C back-end. Many of the changes in the C back-end are
    triggered by special qualifiers. The hope was to try to preserve the
    previous VAX behavior with SDL/VAX, but it's easy to make a mistake
    which breaks this compatibility. So there are bound to be some like the
    one you found.
    	Mark Pilant moved the VAX VMS builds over to using Alpha SDL some
    time ago. I know he ran into a bunch of things, but I'm not sure if
    they're written down anywhere. Of course, he wouldn't have run into any
    Unix backward incompatibilities, but he might be able to shed some
    light on other problems.
    	Alpha SDL doesn't get a lot of maintenance cycles, but it would
    still be good to QAR the inconsistencies and incompatibilities so
    there's some hope of fixing them someday. There's an SDL component in
    all the Alpha release databases for filing QARs against.