[osgeo4w-dev] Proposal: starting 64 bit package tree

[Alex Mandel]

On 03/05/2012 01:09 AM, andrea antonello wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> I asked long time ago what would be necessary to get osgeo4w 64bit ready.
> I do not remember what the answer was, but it was something that there
> is no installer for that OS.
> 
I'm not sure what that means, the installer doesn't have to be 64 bit
itself. So I was thinking it's just a copy of the current installer
pointing to a different url that's the 64 bit packages.

> What you are proposing is to install in a parallel tree?
> 

Anything that is available as 64 bit. My primary concern right now is
QGIS, gdal/ogr. There's work on a current bug right now in QGIS where
printing and some other operations might be limited by memory.
Eventually everything will be available as 64 bit and we should just be
ahead of the trend.

> I can only speak from a java tribe point of view. I would be happy to
> do so. At first thought we would some parts with native components and
> others that are interpreted and therefore for both OS. So I assume
> something should be done at installer level also? Just thinking loud.
> 
> Anyways I would be very happy to load a 64 bit Java environment and uDig.
> 
Does Java installed on the end user machine needs to be 64 bit in order
to run a 64 bit jar?

Thanks,
Alex

> Thanks,
> Andrea
> 
> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> wrote:
>> It seems to come up often in my discussions with Desktop users, 64 bit
>> versions of QGIS and other major osgeo applications would be a great
>> boon for power users. With most new workstations capable of 64 bit and
>> many power users opting to install Win 7 64 bit (which is stable as
>> compared to win xp 64 bit), I think we should start working towards
>> providing binaries.
>>
>> Not only would it make users happy, but it would actually provide a
>> competitive advantage over some other systems. Not being able to use the
>> full 4-8 GB of ram common in GIS workstations is somewhat frustrating.
>>
>> I realize not everything in osgeo4w is available or ready for 64 bit,
>> and 64 bit python can get messy due to lack of packages (but numpy is
>> available). So my proposal is that we make a directory parallel to the
>> current osgeo4w and either augment the current installer with an option
>> to choose it or just have a separate setup.exe pretty much identical to
>> the 32bit one currently and call it osgeo4w64. That way there's a place
>> to at least start putting what packages are available into the system.
>>
>> I have 64 bit users/machines willing to test and might be able to get a
>> dedicated build VM for 64 bit if needed.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Alex