Resurrect discussion: Mixing 32 and 64 bit distro

[Tom Honermann]

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.

Tom.