Windows 32 and 64 bit

Dirk Hohndel dirk at hohndel.org
Thu Oct 29 15:56:28 PDT 2020


I'm considering moving our default Windows build to 64bit - it's 2020 after all.
Some studying of the information I can get from the people who have enabled the update 
notifications tells me that we still have at least 50 users running Windows on actual 32bit 
hardware - so below 1% of our Windows user base (but the number could be higher if a
lot of 32bit Windows users have disabled the update check).

Either way, I think that's too many to completely drop having a 32bit binary, but it certainly 
seems to make it reasonable to switch to 64bit by default.

One thing that is triggering this is that I am having problems getting a working libmtp
build on a 32bit MXE build. It's entirely possible that that's simply my own fault, but
oddly the moment I tried a 64bit build it worked...
Of course we only need libmtp (so far) for the brand new Garmin Descent Mk2/Mk2i,
and the likely overlap between people with a $1200+ brand new dive computer and
a 32bit Windows machine is... small.

Curious to hear people's thoughts.

/D


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