Create 64-bit native applications in PowerBuilder Classic.
There is no special target for 64-bit native applications. To build a 64-bit application, select the platform in the Project painter General tab. If you need to deliver both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of your application, you should use separate projects and separate folders for the deployed output.
There is no IDE for 64-bit development. Design time uses the same 32-bit interface and 64-bit features display at runtime when you deploy the application. When you click the running man button, the project runs as a 32-bit application.
32-bit remains the default for new and migrated applications.
During the deploy process, PowerBuilder checks and reports unsupported features used in the application.
The new ProcessBitness property identifies whether the application is a 32-bit or 64-bit process.
See Objects and Controls for more about the Environment object. See the PowerScript Reference to read about the GetEnvironment function.
The longptr datatype is 4 bytes in the 32-bit platform and 8 bytes in the 64-bit platform. In the 32-bit platform, longptr is the same as long; you can continue using long wherever longptr is required in 32-bit applications. In 64-bit applications, however, using long to hold longptr variables will lead to data truncation from 8 bytes to 4 bytes, or memory corruption if you pass a
longref variable when a longptr ref is required. If you want to move to 64-bit, use longptr wherever required. It does no harm to 32-bit.
Since PowerBuilder does not have a datatype corresponding to the C++ pointer type, and there are no pointer operations in PowerBuilder, longptr is not a full-fledged PowerBuilder datatype. You can use it to hold/pass window handles, database handles, and other objects that are essentially memory addresses. Doing complex operations on longptr type might not work. If you want to represent/compute 8-byte long integers, uselonglong.
The design time environment requires:
The runtime environment requires:
There are limitations to this new feature:
These features are not supported:
Also, if you select Properties in the RichTextEdit Object Dialog popup menu, the application crashes if you select the Print Spec tabpage and click OK.
Some things are not problematic, simply different:
You can only use 32-bit PowerBuilder extensions in the PowerBuilder Classic IDE. For runtime, package and distribute 64-bit extension libraries with your 64-bit applications. The file names of your 64-bit extension should match the 32-bit file names, since the application references it by file name.
To build 64-bit native applications with OrcaScript, use the new X64 option to build executable commands. For example:
build executable exeNameiconNamepbrNamepbdflags x64