Re: 64-bit safe environment

[Michael Eager <eager at eagercon dot com>]

Ron 603-884-2088 wrote:
>
>         "In a 64-bit safe environment, this field is an 8-byte unsigned
>         offset."

I saw this terminology in the draft and I have no idea what it means.
What is a "64-bit safe environment"?  What does being safe mean?  
(I thought that all of Dwarf2 was safe, or at least, not dangerous.)   
Why are we talking about environments?  (There is no mention of environments 
in the Dwarf2 standard.)  What is an environment in the context of a standard 
debugging format?  Certainly Dwarf2 can be interpreted in whatever environment
one chooses.  And why should we care?

Proposal 991102.1, which has been adopted, describes modifications to 
support 64-bit architectures.  

Proposal 000331.1, which has NOT been adopted, uses this terminology.
Proposals which have not been adopted should not be incorporated
into the draft.  

I hope that this is just some local (or IA64) jargon.  I do not see that 
there is a concept here that needs to be incorporated in the Dwarf standard.  
Whatever value it may have in the discussion of proposal 000331.1, material
from an unapproved proposal shouldn't be in the draft.  

-- 
Michael Eager	 Eager Consulting     eager@eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306  650-325-8077