RFC: Cygwin 64 bit?

[Thomas Wolff]

I wrote:
>> I have always wondered what the cyg*.dll's are doing in /bin. Not being
>> a dll insider..., I may be overlooking something, but maybe it's time to
>> move them over to /usr/lib and then add /usr/lib64, just as on Linux
>> systems.
>> Oh, and if it's about the PATH, I don't think any Windows programm will
>> look for a cyg*.dll, so the cygwin loading function could probably be
>> hard-coded to add /usr/lib (and /usr/lib64) to the path.
Am 28.06.2011 22:29, schrieb Charles Wilson:
> That only helps if the new process is being launched by an existing
> cygwin process.  If you launch the cygwin app from windows (e.g. via a
> shortcut), then you're completely at the mercy of the system $PATH
> value.  In many cases, you don't WANT to add the cygwin directories to
> the global PATH -- what if you have two (or more) separate cygwin
> installations?  Which one gets the preferred system PATH entry?  What if
> you switch between cygwin and msys? or cygwin and interix?  Having a
> cygwin DLL dir in the global $PATH might interfere with the operation of
> those other environments.
>
> By putting (most) DLLs in the same directory that (most) cygwin EXEs
> live in, we leverage the Windows Runtime Loader behavior that FIRST
> looks in dir-of-EXE for any linked DLLs, before searching $PATH.
I am aware that cygwin dirs should not appear in the global path. The 
idea is... (see below).


Corinna wrote:
> The original idea to keep the DLLs in /bin was to allow running Cygwin
> applications from a non-Cygwin process without hassle.  A typical
> example is CMD.  You can simply chdir to C:\cygwin\bin and run `ls'.  If
> /lib contains all the DLLs, this will break unless C:\cygwin\lib is in
> %Path%.
>
> Also, you can't just create a bash shortcut on the desktop, unless you
> really know what you're doing (set the start directory in the shortcut
> to C:\cygwin\lib).  When moving the DLLs out of /bin, you add some new
> hurdle to using Cygwin.
>
> Without this problem, or if we decide to ignore this problem, I would be
> all for moving DLLs to /lib or /lib64.
Can't cygwin compilation ensure that the cygwin1.dll is always loaded 
first so it could take care of this (if only by then adding to the path)?
(I guess the answer may be no because Windows is juggling with the DLLs...)
Thomas