Windows Vista restricts GNU GCC apps to 32 MB

[Christopher Browne]

On 4/28/07, Sy Ali <sy1234-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> http://www.trnicely.net/misc/vista.html
>
> .. reading it now.  It's already interesting.
>
> I guess all gcc-compiled applications will have to have a special
> fugly-windows-workaround version too.  How is that even possible when
> a lot of programs are "working fine and therefore not actively
> maintained" ?  (cfdisk comes to mind)
>
> Or maybe someone can write a wrapper to help people recompile gcc
> software targetted to vista to help with this.. uh.. "feature".

This isn't as general a restriction as you seem to be reading it to be.

It affects applications only if they effectively ignore that Win32 exists.

In effect, it's a limitation when running MS-DOS-style applications on
Windows (and that fits; MS-DOS was unaware of the existence of Win32
as it predates it).

It's not a restriction for apps you might deploy using Cygwin; Cygwin
provides a POSIX-y layer on top of Win32, in which case the
restriction may be easily inferred NOT to apply.

It's not a restriction for apps that might combine Win32 with "other
stuff" (as would be the case for things like ports of Gimp or Gnome
apps or KDE apps); by virtue of having memory management going thru
Win32, they don't run into the "feature" you're pointing out.

It may well be a relevant restriction to things like bootloaders, but
anyone that builds a bootloader requiring 32MB of memory deserves any
trouble they get into :-).
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
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