Win64 discussion on IRC

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Wed Feb 11 09:16:27 UTC 2009


I'm just going to copy this conversation here so we have it archived ...

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<NightStrike> anyway, I'm an admin on the project to bring GCC to Win64.

<NightStrike> that is, http://mingw-w64.sf.net/

<NightStrike> Are there any plans for fedora's mingw group to jump
into 64-bit land?

<NightStrike> If so, I'd like to offer our services in briding that gap

<kmeyer> I think those services would be quite welcome!

<NightStrike> here's our deal.. first, we reside on irc.oftc.net,
because, well, that's where #gcc development is :)

<NightStrike> so you can always reach us at irc://irc.oftc.net/#mingw-w64

<kmeyer> ok

<NightStrike> second, we operate on gcc trunk.  It ameks no sense to
work with compilers that are ancient, having over 400k of local
patches that will never see the official repo

<NightStrike> gcc 4.4 is going to branch any minute now, and we'll
make an official branch with no modifications from gcc sources.  Kai
Tietz has worked tirelessly to make sure that everything we need to
fix in gcc goes into gcc.  As a result, gcc builts out of the box with
all default options (ie, nothing needed in configure) for win64

<NightStrike> sorry, we'll make an official release

<NightStrike> here's the best part -- our headers fully support
targetting win432 as well

<NightStrike> minus the 4 :)

<NightStrike> We have a buildbot running that generates daily
snapshots of the complete toolchain in a completely relocatable tarred
up root system

<NightStrike> those snapshots are hosted on 5 different platforms --
the native win64, and 4 cross compilers - cygwin32, win32, linux32,
and linux64

<NightStrike> this means that you downlaod the tar for your platform
(probably either linux32 or linux64), extract it into and dir
(/tool/chain, for instance)

<NightStrike> then put /tool/chain/bin in your PATH and compile

<NightStrike> couldn't be more turnkey :)

<NightStrike> make sense?

<kmeyer> I'm not sure how this differs from compiling for 32-bit windows

<kmeyer> can't we just use normal gcc (as soon as 4.4 hits)?

<NightStrike> not for native 64-bit programs

<NightStrike> everything you make will be a 32--bit program that runs
in the WoW emulator on a win64 box

<NightStrike> ie, if you open up taskmgr, you'll see an asterisk next
to it

<kmeyer> so how is "an official release with no modifications from gcc
sources" any different?

<NightStrike> because you can't actually build gcc to target win64
with the mingw.org header set

<NightStrike> basically, mingw.org supports win32 and only win32, and
when Kai came along and made everythimg 64-bit capable ( he did mingw
headers/libs, binutils, gcc, and gdb all himself), the mingw team
refused his work and told him to create a new project

<NightStrike> so he did

<NightStrike> we maintained backward compatibility, and have a
multilib-capable toolchain

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-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my OCaml programming blog: http://camltastic.blogspot.com/
Fedora now supports 68 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
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