64-bit DMD for windows?

[torhu]

On 16.12.2011 00:35, Mehrdad wrote:
> On 12/15/2011 3:20 PM, Trass3r wrote:
>>>  dealbreaker - i'd love to use D for my scientific programming, but my
>>>  datasets often reach several GB...
>>>
>>>  my computer has 16GB and i intend to make use of them.
>>
>>  Scientific programming on Windoze? You can't be serious :P
>
> lol, that's not even the only issue.
>
> 32-bit programs can't show 64-bit dialogs. So "Open this file..."
> actually shows the SysWOW64 folder instead of the System32 folder, and
> there's _no way_ to bypass this unless you build a 64-bit app.

Most people are not actually doing scientific programming.  And they
don't actually need to open an open file dialog to access files that are
in the "real" System32.  But if they do, there are several easy
solutions.[1]  Another reason for needing a 64-bit program on Windows
would be if you are creating a shell extension.  TortoiseSVN comes in
both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors for this reason.

People coming from Linux are accustomed to a running only 64-bit
programs if they have a 64-bit OS.  That's simply because Linux is
usually distributed through downloading.  To limit the download size,
they leave out the 32-bit versions of libraries.  Which means you can't
actually run 32-bit programs without downloading and installing the
packages containing those libraries first.  At least that's my
understanding.

This issue doesn't exist on Windows.  Probably not on OS X either, but
I'm not too familiar with that system.

So when people ask for 64-bit versions without stating why they need it,
I always have to ask what features they want that the 32-bit version
doesn't have.


[1]
http://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php/Some_Files_and_Folders_Shown_by_Windows_Explorer_Are_Not_Shown_by_Total_Commander!#Solutions