On Tue, 19 Dec 1995 21:55:56 -0600 
 Peter Seebach <seebs@solon.com> wrote:

 > (Note, actually, that a fair number of programs, like pine, will start
 > working if long becomes the 64-bit type.)  (This may not apply on i386.
 > On 68k, pine fails unless you include <unistd.h> for prototypes, which
 > is not the default.)

This, by your own argument, is programmer error - they didn't bring the 
proper prototypes into scope by including <unistd.h> when it was 
appropriate.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see the point in modifying the OS for either 
the benefit of or to find weaknesses in other people's software.

Personally, I'd like to see stuff out there that compiled "out of the 
box" on SunOS (K&R compiler), HP-UX (ANSI compiler), NetBSD/alpha 
(64-bit longs), NetBSD/hp300 (32-bit longs), and IRIX boxen.  (Did I come 
up with a wide enough variety?  :-)  I also don't want to see a lot of:

	#if defined(__NetBSD__)
		[ special goo because NetBSD did werid things with `long' ]
	#else
		[ code for every other known system on the planet ]
	#endif

Think about it this way: I don't think we want to give NetBSD the 
repuation of being a hard platform to port software to.  I'd bet a case 
of Bridgeport Blue Heron that if NetBSD went to 64-bit longs across the 
board, you'd see a lot of "3rd party" packages flat-out say "NetBSD not 
supported".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
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