Cygwin as native 64-bit in the future?

Question

Does anyone know if there will ever be a true 64-bit version of Cygwin? The FAQ often says, "As far as we know, no one is working on a 64-bit version," or something like that. Is cygwin really a 32-bit application (or an application family if you prefer)?

The 64-bit version will be enjoyable. For the most part, I can do what I need with the 32-bit version of cygwin in 64-bit windows. But from time to time, a 64-bit program launched with cygwin will recognize the fact that it was launched by a 32-bit parent and behaves incorrectly or does not work at all. I have to open a cmd.exe or powershell session to run these few commands. One example that you can play for yourelf on Windows 2003 64-bit with IIS installed is to run the following command from cygwin, and then from cmd.exe, which was not opened from cygwin. (In cmd.exe, obviously, there is no need to use double backslashes, but they work fine in both shells.)

cscript c: \\ windows \\ system32 \\ iisApp.vbs

So, I can live with opening a cmd.exe session when I need to run something that behaves this way. But, being a huge fan of Cygwin, I would really like to see an indication that someday someone will release a 64-bit version.

Answer 1

Probably a coincidence, but shortly after this question was submitted, there was a big stream in which the developers of Cygwin discussed 64-bit here:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.devel/233/focus=247

TL; DR - they actually think about 64-bit Cygwin, but porting problems are complicated ...

Answer 2

You will need to see a clairvoyant in order to get the final answer to your question, but here it’s all the same.

64-bit Cygwin is certainly possible, but it will take a lot of work. This is due not only to the adaptation of the Cygwin DLL, which probably contains many 32-bit assumptions, but also the porting of all packages in the distribution. I assume that this will happen when 64-bit Windows becomes so widespread that developing a 32-bit version is no longer worth it to avoid dividing the Cygwin project into fairly limited resources.