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Re: Resurrect discussion: Mixing 32 and 64 bit distro
On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 11:49:58PM -0500, Tom Honermann wrote:
>On 02/12/2013 11:26 AM, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 04:40:09PM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>> On Feb 12 10:29, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 8:40 AM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>>>> Hi guys,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I slept a bit bad tonight.
>>>>>
>>>>> As you may or may not remember, we had a discussion about how to go
>>>>> forward with a 64 bit distro in 2011.
>>>>>
>>>>> In this discussion I held vehemently to the view that we have to create
>>>>> the 64 bit distro in a way which allows to mix Cygwin 64 and 32 bit
>>>>> applications freely. My main point was that it may take a long time
>>>>> until we get all the Cygwin 32 bit packages built for 64 bit, and
>>>>> therefore have to provide a mix so that users can adopt the 64 bit
>>>>> distro early without having to drop the tools they are using.
>>>>>
>>>>> But is that really so? I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe that problem
>>>>> is exaggerated or overvalued.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe overvalued. Would an idea that 32bit executables use the 32bit
>>>> runtime and 64bit executables use the 64bit runtime be bad? So for
>>>> the time being deliver both 32bit cygwin1.dll and cyg64w1.dll (I
>>>> forget what you called it) and allow the executables to use the
>>>> correct version?
>>>
>>> That wasn't the question. Of course, if you mix the distros, you will
>>> have to provide two DLLs, one for 32 and one for 64 bit. The question
>>> is, shall the 32 and 64 bit Cygwin DLLs interact or not. Keep 32 and
>>> 64 bit distinct from each other or not. Even if you just mix them into
>>> one /bin, you have to keep the new cyg64 DLL prefix. But then again
>>> you would get the same result by having two distinct distros and add the
>>> other /bin dir to $PATH, without the requirement to keep the cyg64
>>> DLL prefix.
>>
>> I think two distinct distros with no explicit understanding between the
>> 32-bit and 64-bit is the sanest approach. I hate the thought of lots of
>> code in 64-bit Cygwin to specifically deal with 32-bit aps.
>>
>> Would it be possible to write some kind of "shim" 64-bit application
>> which "did something" to run a 32-bit Cygwin for people who can't
>> wait to have their favorite package ported to 64-bit?
>
>Sounds like a suggestion towards a Cygwin-On-Cygwin64 analog to WOW64.
>Ie, a cygwin1.dll as a thunk/wrapper into cyg64w1.dll similar to what
>wow64.dll does for WOW64 processes.
Yep. That's what I was thinking. I doubt that it's worth the effort
though.
cgf