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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Wed Apr 2 01:12:35 CEST 2008

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.

Can you explain what you mean by "native platform"? I usually perform cross-builds for amd64, so would then this directory remain empty?

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.

The reverse may also be true: some tools may expect PCbuild to contain always x86 binaries, even on AMD64 - as they don't support non-x86 at all. Those tools might break if PCbuild suddenly starts containing AMD64 binaries.

If this is all about just Mozilla, then I'd be much more in favour than if it was for some theoretical package. So if Mozilla builds with that kind of setup, and works correctly - go for it. If you have to fix Mozilla anyway, consider fixing it so it looks in the amd64 directory.

Regards, Martin

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