[GRASS-dev] R: [GRASS-PSC] SVN Write Access Request

[Glynn Clements]

Marco Pasetti wrote:

> >> 2) branches/develbranch_6/win32
> >>  
> >> the folder where i put all the scripts and files needed to prepare the 
> >> release installer (as an exe file).
> 
> >why refer to 32bit in the dirname?
> 
> Good question; actually I named it as I'm used in my windows projects,
> because I build on a 32 system;

FWIW, the reason why people refer to "Win32" is to distinguish it from
the original 16-bit (8086 real-mode) API, where you had to allocate
memory in chunks of no more than 64KiB. In practice, Win32 refers to
the use of a flat address space, with the implicit requirement that
you need at least a 386.

There aren't any major API differences between 32-bit and 64-bit
versions of Windows. The main issue is that there is a distinguished
integer type (I forget the name) which is wide enough to hold a
pointer (you can't rely upon a pointer fitting into a LONG if you want
to support Win64, as LONG is always 32 bits).

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>