[PATCH 1/3] Compile oleaut32 for win32 but not for win64

Pavel Roskin proski at gnu.org
Tue Oct 3 17:14:31 CDT 2006


On Tue, 2006-10-03 at 14:46 -0700, James Hawkins wrote:
> > I understand oleaut32 can be fixed for win64, but nobody has done it.
> >
> > I believe my patch is worth applying because it enables Wine compilation
> > without applying incorrect hacks to the sources.  Instead, a mechanism
> > is established to disable some parts of Wine for win64 until they are
> > ported properly.  We may need it for other files.
> >
> 
> Removing oleaut32 from the build just hides the real problem, and
> creates a slew of new problems.  What will happen when an app tries to
> use oleaut32 with a win64 build of Wine?  The correct solution is to
> fix oleaut32 to work with win64, no matter how difficult it is.  We
> can't allow temporary hacks in the meantime, or there will be
> significantly less motivation to fix the real problem, because a
> workaround is available.

I understand this argument, but I think it doesn't always work this way.

Different people have different skills, different amount of time and
different hardware.

If Wine for win64 builds somehow, many people will try to fix simple
things, like compile warnings.  That's a lot of rather simple work that
may be too boring for an OLE guru.  Somebody will probably debug further
problems.  And somebody will fix the broken parts.

If oleaut32 is left in the broken and "enabled" state like a roadblock,
fewer people would be motivated to do simple things like fixing warnings
and checking that their modifications compile for win64.

I, for one, don't have any experience with OLE and little experience
with Window programming.  Yet I have the 64-bit hardware and I knowledge
to fix some simple things like printf warnings.

I'm not going to stop working on other projects and spend days learning
OLE to fix oleaut32.

I could, however, fix the problem in generated.c problem one day because
I know Perl scripting.  But please note that the generated.c problem is
only seen after oleaut32 is compiled (or skipped somehow).  Somebody
with Perl knowledge and a 64-bit system could just abandon the native
compilation after seeing the failure in oleaut32, without even being
aware that his or her knowledge would be very useful.

Conversely, somebody who knows how to fix oleaut32 could be stumped by
the generated.c problem.  Then we would have another roadblock that is
supposed to motivate everybody (in theory).

It's just a matter of introducing some parallelism to use the available
resources of the developers in a better way.

I'm not a regular Wine developer, and the above is just a little more
than "my two cents".  Let's not start a flamewar over this, OK?

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin




More information about the wine-devel mailing list