[osgeo4w-dev] Support for the WIN64 binaries

[Frank Warmerdam]

Tamas Szekeres wrote:
> 2008/3/3, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com>:
>>  My opinion is that this should be deferred till we have successfully
>>  produced a 32bit generation of OSGeo4W, and even then I'm assuming this
>>  is mostly something aimed at developers, is that right?
>>
> 
> No. As far as I can see the number of the 64 bit Windows Servers
> installed in production environment and Vista 64 for the clients is
> quite increasing. I'm saying this, because I'm asked about twice a
> week to provide Win64 binaries mostly because of the .NET stuff which
> is non-usable in their environments, definitely.

Tamas,

I'll try to connect in IRC to understand this need a bit better.

>>  Obviously, you are welcome to apply your time as desired, but I'm not keen
>>  on a win64 adventure yet.
>>
> 
> Since I'm not keen to develop yet another binary distribution
> installer for this, I'm wondering
> if we could establish a placeholder in osgeo4w to convey the Win64
> binaries I currently can produce. It would certainly be a limited set
> of the packages comparing to the Win32 stuff, but it would provide
> something that's much difficult to create from scratch for the users.

It would not really be any problem to provide some additional Win64
binaries within the existing installer as packages.  Perhaps these
packages would (for now) appear only in the Win64 group so as not
to confuse people just interested in 32bit.

We could put the unpacked stuff into:
  C:\OSGeo4W\win64\bin

etc.

> My only problem is that I'm quite unfamiliar about how the build
> mechanism is actually being established in osgeo.

There is no build mechanism per-se for OSGeo4W.  Individual packagers
build their packages on their own systems, and then package them
up in the proper directory structure as a .tar.bz2 file and upload it
to a particular place on download.osgeo.org as per:

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo4W_Packaging

So, if you are keen on the job, I would not object to some Win64 packages
within OSGeo4W. I'd be happy to help explain packaging, etc.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org