[Python-Dev] FW: [issue2513] 64bit cross compilation on windows (original) (raw)

Mark Hammond mhammond at skippinet.com.au
Tue Apr 1 11:45:57 CEST 2008

I wrote:

FYI, I've uploaded a patch that provides for cross-compilation on Windows between 32 and 64 bit platforms - all comments invited!

While I have some people's attention I'd like to re-raise another issue I foresee for x64 builds. I've mentioned this over the last couple of months, but haven't got much of a response, so this seems like a reasonable opportunity to try one more time :)

Currently, the "official" (by way of being de-facto) directory structure for a build tree is 'PCBuild/.' for x86 builds and 'PCBuild/amd64' for x64 platforms. I believe this might cause problems for people trying to port their applications to 64bit platforms. My proposal is that we change this subtly - that both 'PCBuild/x86', and 'PCBuild/amd64' exist, while 'PCBuild/.' is always the 'native' platform - ie, that 'PCBuild/.' be a copy of one of the platform subdirectories.

The rationale is fairly simple: I'm quite certain that this new directory layout will break existing "native only" build processes (ie, those that aren't aware of cross-compilation). I'm quite certain that Mozilla will break, for example, and no cross-compilation process exists that I am aware of. Existing build tools already know about the PCBuild directory, and are focused almost exclusively towards native compilation - all such tools on non-x86 platforms are currently broken. My proposal would help avoid breakage for existing build processes or tools that try to natively target x64, and give a reasonable story for build processes that explicitly support cross-compilation. I believe the costs are fairly small - disk space is cheap and the extra complexity in the VS project files should be reasonable.

What do people think? I think it's time to take the approach of "silent ascent", so unless I hear objections I'll upload a new patch which implements this and also takes it into account for Distutils builds.

Cheers,

Mark

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