X86_mscoff / x86_64 as default for dub projects (windows)

[Andre Pany]

On Wednesday, 19 December 2018 at 13:11:19 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is 
>> your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 
>> as default on windows?
>>
>> To be pretty clear, you still can compile to x86 OMF by 
>> setting the default architecture either in settings.json or as 
>> command line argument. The proposal is just to set another 
>> default.
>>
>> This is now possible as DMD and LDC comes with lld and the 
>> needed libraries.
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Andre
>
> To me, it's obvious that the default on Windows 64-bit (i.e. 
> "Windows" for 99.9% of the population) should be x86_64.

I propose a smooth transition in 3 steps:

- 64 bit version of DMD should default to x86_64 instead of x86 
(Optlink). I will check whether I am able to create the pr.

- an additional Windows package should be created for each 
release containing the 64 bit dmd version. This package should be 
clearly marked as experimental while the current Windows package 
is marked as stable.

- in some years, if 64 bit dmd and lld is proofed to be stable, 
either both packages can be combined into 1 or we can leave both 
packages but remove the experimental tag.

Kind regards
Andre