Re: RFC: Cygwin 64 bit?

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Jun 28 00:23, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 05:28 +0100, Andy Koppe wrote:
> > To avoid having to port a large part of the distro before 64-bit
> > Cygwin becomes usable, and for more seamless compatibility with users'
> > existing 32-bit binaries and sources than you'd get with a separate
> > Cygwin32 install.
> > 
> > Do those benefits outweigh the costs? I don't know.
> 
> I strongly doubt it.  Once you get past porting the toolchain and
> lower-level stuff, everything beyond that should be more-or-less a
> rebuild.  (Famous last words :-)
> 
> As long as 32-bit and 64-bit installs could exist side-by-side (like we
> had with the 1.5-to-1.7 transition), then I really don't see it being an
> issue.

I have a different point of view here.  As it is, we have a rather low
participation.  Yes, we have a number of dedicated maintainers, but for
most of the maintainers it's just the occasional odd job.  I don't think
you will get a lot of friends by asking all maintainers to create
packages for two separate distros.

This leaves two ways to handle the problem:

- A buildsystem

  Sounds good, but we don't have something like this.  We don't have an
  infrastructure to set up a build system, not everyone uses the same
  way to build packages.  In short, we're not as organized as, say,
  Fedora and I don't see that we have a big chance to become as
  organized.  Especially the buildsystem needs dedicated maintainers.

- Keep everything in a single distro.

  This is the more realistic option, IMO.  Some packages will stick
  to 32 bit and not get a 64 bit counterpart for some time.  Some
  packages will get a 32 and a 64 bit part.

  It's a bit early to discuss how mixed packages should exactly look
  like.  But *my* idea would be that the burden on the maintainers
  stays low, and that a user grabs the one-and-only setup.exe and
  installs Cygwin just as today.


Corinna

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