[GRASS-user] when was the first release of Grass 64 bit?

[Hamish]

razmjooeis wrote:
> > I am reading through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_System
> > It claims:
> > "Release 7.00 was issued in May 2006 and followed up by
> > Release 7x in the next three months. 7x was released in two
> > flavors: 32-bit and 64-bit.
> > Manifold 7x was the first ever 64-bit GIS application
> > in the industry."

Markus N:
> If we are not industry, maybe yes :p

(yes, we count :)

> Changelog:
> http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/snapshot/ChangeLog.gz
> 2005-07-12 15:11  markus
>         * added 64bit notes
> 
> 2005-07-15 11:40  markus
>         * advertise 64bit support if
> activated
> 
> No claim that I did the work of course! It was the effort
> of multiple developers, just above traces I could easily find.

ISTR that Brad did a lot of work cleaning things up and
modernizing it. (?)


> > Does any know when GRASS 64-bit was first released?
> 
> http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass500pre2.html
> GRASS GIS 5.0.0pre2 released 13 September 2001
> "Platforms supported by GRASS:
> Linux, Sun Solaris, Sun Solaris/Intel, Silicon Graphics
> Irix, HP-UX,
> DEC-Alpha, PowerPC, MacOS X, AIX, BSD, CRAY and other UNIX
> compliant
> platforms (32/64bit), experimentally Windows NT/2000
> running Cygnus
> "
> 
> ... so that was way before 2006.

DEC-Alpha and Sun's SPARC chips were 64-bit since forever, and we
did ship official Solaris binaries once upon a time (did Paul
make those?).

I'd hazard a guess that there was a 64 bit [capable] release of
GRASS, used in production, 10 years if not more before the above
date of 2006. e.g. anyone know what hardware Lockheed-Martin were
running to run GRASS back then? I'm guessing it wasn't cheap 386s,
and anyway that predates the GRASS port to & rise of linux in
'96(??).

So my guess for the first 64 bit GRASS would be early 90s with
the emergence of the 64bit RISC chips. I never had a CRAY to
play with though, & don't know the history there. :)


Hamish