Resurrect discussion: Mixing 32 and 64 bit distro

Corinna Vinschen corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com
Tue Feb 12 15:40:00 GMT 2013


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.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat



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