BorlandTalk.com

Dennis Landi · Guest

There seems to be a lot of misinformation regarding 64-bit Windows
development in regard to what will and will not be supported. I was able to
get some answers from the source. Although this exchange is in the VC++
context, the answers would surely apply to a 64-bit Borland compiler if we
ever got one....

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Guy with the Questions: Dennis Landi
Guy with the Answers: Ronald Laeremans, Visual C++ Team

Question: 1) I have been perusing the MSDN VC++ pages. Everything seems to
be geared towards .NET integration. Will MS continue support natively
compiled code or will they be pushing developers to do everything as
"managed" C++?

Answer: No, we fully support compiling native code.

Question: 2) Also, on 32-bit platforms we can call 32-bit unmanaged DLLS
from managed assemblies. On Win64 will a 64-bit .NET assembly be able to
call an unmanaged 64-bit DLL?

Aswer: Yes, it will.

Question: 3) On the AMD64, thats supports the running of both 32-bit and
64-bit code, would we be able to call unmanaged 32-bit DLLs from a 64-bit
..NET assembly? (Sometimes its not practical/possible to recompile/port the
32-bit DLL).

Answer: No. You will have to use any of the supported IPC mechanisms like
named pipes, sockets, memory mapped files, COM. There is no type of thunk on
64-bit version of Windows that will allow 64-bit user mode code to call
32-bit user mode code in the same process.

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Michael Schnell · Guest

Thanks for sharing this (though I'd like to see it in
borland.public.delphi.netpreview.non-technical).

I did know that the CIL definition supports calling platform dependent
code via "unmanaged code" and several IPC mechanisms.

But will D8 be able to do that ? (I don't see a cause why it should not,
as it obviously is able to create pure "unmanaged" exe's.)

The more important questions: Will D8 be able to create _clean_ purely
managed code CIL assemblies that can run on non-Windows platforms ?

How can we use IPCs to call platform dependent code on non-Windows
platforms ?

-Michael