Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: 64 bit

2013/11/11 Pedro <pedlino@gmail.com>

> Marcello Romani wrote
> > > And all that just to have a 64bit binary that would only give more work
> > > and
> > > no immediate benefit...
> >
> > After this reply I hope anyone whining about Windows users being let
> > down because there's no 64 bit version of OpenOffice/LibreOffice shut
> > the hell up and start complaining to Microsoft. :)
>
> Right...
>
> Because all FLOSS projects that have 64bit Windows versions (mentioned in
> this email
> http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/64-bit-tp4081444p4082245.html that
> some
> users choose to ignore) are all run by stupid people who choose to have a
> lot of work for no reason...

Read your own post: "a lot of work for no reason".
First, some of these projects *have* reasons to have a 64bit build. GIMP
can handle large and complicated images, and need to break the 4GB limit
(2GB really on default build). Other needs to handle large quantity of data
and might take advantage of new vectorizations instructions, etc...
Second, it *is* a lot of work. Even in the post you mention, there is at
least two project that kinda struggle with 64bit windows build: firefox,
where they are not really supported, and FreeCAD, which seems to have
dropped support for 64bit windows. It's costly to maintain program that
build for many targets, and cost is an issue with some open source projects.
And last, building a piece of software from the ground up and
maintaining/evolving a (rather large) project for that long are very
different. Here, we're not talking about writting code from scratch, but
you have to make sure that every piece clicks. Going back through *all* the
code to make sure that there isn't a pointer somewhere or an int there that
would suddenly break because some OS API expect another type of value is
indeed "a lot of work", way more than just writing from scratch.
LibreOffice might be a fairly recent project, but it's codebase goes way
back.
And again, all of the work needed to barely have a stable working build
would yield very little benefit. The code don't magically take advantage of
64bit code by just changing the compiler's target.

So, no, other projects didn't decide to have "a lot of work for no reason".
*Some* decided to have 64bit builds from the start, *some* decided to
revamp their code, *some* decided not to, *some* gave up on it. But in
every cases, ressources for such projects are limited, and focusing on
bugfixes and enhancement seems more useful than having a 64bit build for
what is, regarding LibreOffice, no reason.

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