Oolite Bulletins

One of the things I thought I would do pretty soon after picking this game up would be to build it myself. However, looking at some threads in the Windows forum I saw something about how you can't build it on 64-bit Windows.

Is that right? What's the problem?

wades wrote:

One of the things I thought I would do pretty soon after picking this game up would be to build it myself. However, looking at some threads in the Windows forum I saw something about how you can't build it on 64-bit Windows.

Is that right? What's the problem?

EDIT: Deleted my tosh based on far more sensible answer from A_C below.

wades: To be honest, I have never tried it myself, given that I do not have a 64-bit system and if you would like to give it a try, please do so and let us know how it goes. But I think it will be problematic - if at all possible, because the MinGW compiler we use generates 32-bit code. For generating 64-bit native code under Windows, there is another project in development, namely MinGW64. I do not know what the status of this project is and if it has reached a stage where a demanding application like Oolite can be built with it.

It might be possible to build Oolite on an 64-bit system in Win32 compatibility mode, but I have no idea how this would be achieved and we have had reports of unsuccessful build attempts in the past. If you can make it happen, I would be very interested to know how.

OK.

My guess is that the output of the 32-bit compiler should be fine, after all I'm running a binary that was presumably built with it.

One thing that jumped out at me when I was looking at the build instructions was a requirement that things be on drive D:. I only have one logical drive on my machine, can I fake it using subst or something?

Is there a reason why this isn't controlled by, say, an environment variable?

subst should work fine for simulating a drive D:. As for an environment variable controlling this, it could be possible theoretically, but you would have to change a lot of GNUstep core makefiles which contain direct references to the drive GNUstep is installed on, which makes it somewhat impractical.

Really? I think Screet is building trunk on win64 systems all the time.

Am I not getting something?

hm...just curious, any possiblity of sharing the Win64 build once it's done? I am running Dziet's win32 builds on my 64bit machine, but I noticed that 32bit apps run slower than expected cause of compatibility mode.

op : You could try doing it in a virtual machine that has a 32bit system installed.

If your 64bit OS is win7 professional or ultimate, you get the "XPmode" for free from Mícrosoft (via download from microsoft).
It is VirtualPC + a licensed winXP pro 32 bit (with no 3d acceleration) built to run in that Virtual PC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XP_Mode#Windows_XP_Mode
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtua ... fault.aspx

See continuation at the Building Oolite Windows from source - The Easier Way thread.

snork wrote:

op : You could try doing it in a virtual machine that has a 32bit system installed.

If your 64bit OS is win7 professional or ultimate, you get the "XPmode" for free from Mícrosoft (via download from microsoft).
It is VirtualPC + a licensed winXP pro 32 bit (with no 3d acceleration) built to run in that Virtual PC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XP_Mode#Windows_XP_Mode
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtua ... fault.aspx

I don't think this is about some kind of emulation. After all, if he wanted 32 bit build it's possible to download from Dziet's page.

another_commander wrote:

For generating 64-bit native code under Windows, there is another project in development, namely MinGW64. I do not know what the status of this project is and if it has reached a stage where a demanding application like Oolite can be built with it.

Hmmm.. I do now have access to a 64 bit PC.. I might investigate this..

Lestradae wrote:

Really? I think Screet is building trunk on win64 systems all the time.

Am I not getting something?

If I am not mistaken, Screet is building on 32-bit, then runs it on different, 64-bit system. At least, that's what I remembered from the last time he posted about this.

another_commander wrote:

Lestradae wrote:

Really? I think Screet is building trunk on win64 systems all the time.

Am I not getting something?

If I am not mistaken, Screet is building on 32-bit, then runs it on different, 64-bit system. At least, that's what I remembered from the last time he posted about this.

Ah, that may be as you say. And explains the problem. Bad news for wades

another_commander wrote:

If I am not mistaken, Screet is building on 32-bit, then runs it on different, 64-bit system. At least, that's what I remembered from the last time he posted about this.

This is how I am doing it. IIRC, if I build directly on Win64 (Vista x64 Ultimate, 6GB Ram), MinGW opens 127 windows (command prompts actually), throws an error, then closes all 127 as the process crashes.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

another_commander wrote:

If I am not mistaken, Screet is building on 32-bit, then runs it on different, 64-bit system. At least, that's what I remembered from the last time he posted about this.

This is how I am doing it. IIRC, if I build directly on Win64 (Vista x64 Ultimate, 6GB Ram), MinGW opens 127 windows (command prompts actually), throws an error, then closes all 127 as the process crashes.

Which is what I'm seeing. With GNUstep 0.23 I can get one command prompt up as one would expect.