32b on 64b Cross-compile suggestion

[Nocturnal]

Hi,

as I'm trying to do a 32b windows compilation on a 64b system it struck me that it's a bit heavy handed to have to install the entire 32b PCL package when all I need is the 32b library for linking. At least I assume there's only one set of PCL header files. Now I could install the 32b package on my machine but then I need to re-install 64b to get my start menu working again.

So my suggestion is the either provide both 64b and 32b libraries with either PCL install or make them available separately. I'll copy mine from one of my 32b machines but going forward this seems like a low cost solution that would facilitate PCL building.

I think this applies to all OS flavors, not just windows except that with Linux there's an archive which would allow the intrepid developer to just extract the lib dir. With Windows that's not possible. Don't know about MacOS.

[Juan Conejero]

I agree. It's clear that the current PCL distributions are too 'rigid'. I'll think on a more flexible way to distribute and install the PCL framework.

[Nocturnal]

Hi Juan,

perhaps a single install for each OS where the installer figures out which flavor to make 'active'? In the case of archive distros the pixinsight.sh script could pick the correct one.

[Carlos Milovic]

This could go by hand with the new distribution system. Just select there the flavors of the PCL one wants....

[Nocturnal]

The thing is that there's really only 1 PCL (headers and docs). It's the library, pixinsight exe and modules that are platform and width specific. So something like

/pcl/bin32
     /bin64
     /lib32
     /lib64
     /dist32
     /dist64
     /src
     /include
     /doc
     /fonts

(or /pcl/bin/x86 and /pcl/bin/x64 etc.) would do just fine. If archive size is an issue then there could still be two different flavors but they can harmlessly be installed 'over each other'.

This would also get rid of some of the environment variable mess that's now required. Or at least make it optional. Even PCLDIR should be optional and default to /pcl (c:\pcl).