When I was working on issue8321, I had problem to test it (mainly recompile existing packages with debugging symbol) on our Windows 7 32 bits because MSYS2 uses 64 bits building tools even for 32 bits packages.
So I setup a Windows 10 64 bits (without license) and succeeded very easily to recompile and get gdb working. More over I found that the Windows 10 64 bits was running faster than the Windows 7 32 bits on the QEMU virtual machine. I guess it is probably because the hosts is also a 64 bits system.
Also Microsoft will end the support of Windows 7 on January 14, 2020.
I’m proposing that for the next release we build client for 32 and 64 bits using Windows 10 64 bits. The NSIS script could detect the architecture and append the proper suffix.
For that we will need that the Foundation buy a Windows 10 license (I’m going to make the request).
It will still based on the MSYS 32 bits packages so as long MSYS support Windows 7, it should still work.
But the Tryton policy is to support only dependencies that are still supported. So once Windows 7 is no more supported by Microsoft, we do no more work to ensure Windows 7 still work.
If your windows 7 is a “normal” version, I think you can use that key to upgrade to windows 10. Unless you want to keep windows 7 around.
I totally agree to build a 64 bits client for windows 10.
I’m also using Ansible to keep several windows 10 machines up-and-running and install packages / software. Ansible advices to use chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/) for that. It would be nice to install the client with chocolatey. You can see chocolatey as a package manager like apt or yum.
I want to be able to build executable on the same machine for former series to ensure that we do not break compatibility.
And more over, I’m not sure the current license for a 32bits can be used for a 64bits.
The client uses NSIS so it seem to be supported by chocolatey.
I do not know the procedure to publish there but I think we should manage it like other distribution packages. It means someone can take the charge to publish there and we can put a link here.
Good idea to have a 64 bit executable… we have sometimes errors with the 32 bit client. Is the compilation script already available to test it ? Should we just add win64 in setup-freeze.py?
