O > Well, if you have a bunch of Windows developers all having a > workstation running 32 bit Windows on a 32 bit CPU, then the option is > not there simply to furnish them all with a new laptop with 64bit CPU > and a Linux 64 bit version to compile the 64bit program. > Their main job will still remain to work on windows software (which > one can actually sell). > > So my question comes from a suggestion to run a 32 bit Linux inside a > VirtualPC virtual machine in the Windows laptops for development. > Then we need only a single 64 bit machine running Linux to test the > performance of the compiled binaries. > This requires the use of a cross-compiler able to compiule 64 bit > binaries on a 32 bit system. I am still not getting why you want to be able to generate 64 bit binaries from a 32 bit OS ? I can understand the logic behind giving your devs a 32 bit linux virtual machine on their windows notebooks, to work with. Here though, they are going to have to work in 32 bit mode, as these are the only binaries then can run. Note I'm not sure how easy it is, or even if it is possible, to generate 64 bit binaries from a pure 32 bit OS. For sure if it is possible you are going to have to do a lot of custom setting up. So, once your devs have some software, tested on 32 bit windows and 32 bit linux, you want test it on your single 64 bit linux machine. At this point just install the source code for you project on this machine, build it from source in 64 bit mode and test. I'm just not getting where you need to generate 64 bit binaries on your 32 bit nodes ? ( But obviously I don't know the full details of your software dev process... ) > Notice also that VPC2007 does not support running anything but a 32 > bit virtual machine emulation. VPC isn't the only virtualisation software around - Are you tied to VPC, or could you consider say VMWare instead, which does support 64 bit guests ? Chris > > Bo Berglund
