64-bit DMD for windows?

[torhu]

On 16.12.2011 10:17, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-12-16 10:10, torhu wrote:
>>  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.
>
> Mac OS X has universal binaries, that is, libraries and executables
> containing code for multiple architectures. All system libraries bundled
> with the OS are compiled (at least) both for 32 and 64bit. This makes it
> no problem running either 32 or 64bit applications, the user don't have
> to know or care.
>

I know that much, but I wasn't sure why they were so keen on having 64 
bit versions of apps.  Maybe just to accelerate the switch to 64-bits by 
making it easier for developers to support both.  And now they have 
started to leave things like Carbon behind in 32-bit land.  At least you 
can't say that Apple isn't moving forward.