#20 MSYS2 front page.

[Erwin Waterlander]

Hi,

I think that the msys2 project needs a nice front page to get better known by the public. Like the front page of mingw-w64 (http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/). Msys2 is probably well known by mingw-w64 users, but not by mingw.org users. At the moment the Summary page of msys2 does not even have a description.

The front page should point to the installation page.

On the installation page you offer a 32 bit package and a 64 bit package. My first assumption was that the 32 bit package would offer a 32 bit msys2, and 32 and 64 bit compilers both for 32 bit host. And the 64 bit package idem dito, but then all for 64 bit host.

After installation I noticed that the only difference is the msys2 shell (32 or 64 bit host), and the compilers are exactly the same, 32 bit for 32 bit host, 64 bit for 64 bit host. Perhaps you should make this clear.

What is the point of having a 64 bit host compiler in a 32 bit msys2 shell? On a 32 bit Windows machine this is useless.

Before I used MSYS2 I used 64 bit gcc for 32 bit host (Ruben van Boxem) on msys on 32 bit Windows. Now I have a new PC with 64 bit Windows, so it doesn't matter any more for me, but other people may need it.

[Steven Penny]

Agree. This project is stellar, but not many know about it.

[Alexx83]

I will work on it some later because doesn't have any free time now.

I created installers for
msys2-base-i686-20140216.tar.xz and msys2-base-x86_64-20140216.tar.xz

Method used:
1) Extract archives
2) zip them using 7-zip (use Store compression level: http://superuser.com/a/337087/294488)
3) follow instructions: https://github.com/bliker/cmder/issues/142

Binaries: msys32-base-setup.exe and msys64-base-setup.exe.

And made some rough prototype for "front page": http://iljau.github.io/msys2-installer/

[Alexx83]

Ilja, do you want to work on front page and installer for us?

It would really nice if my efforts would be "officially" appreciated.

So, yes (as much as time permits), I'd be happy to.

Here it is: http://msys2.github.io/

[Ray Donnelly]

Nice. What about 64bit MSYS2 though?

[Ray Donnelly]

Also can "Publisher" be "The MSYS2 Team"?

Welcome aboard.

What about 64bit MSYS2 though?

It was well hidden. ;)

https://code.google.com/p/sumatrapdf/wiki/WhyNo64bitBuilds

Also can "Publisher" be "The MSYS2 Team"?

It would require some administrative effort as "Class 2 Organization Validation" would be necessary: http://www.startssl.com/?app=35

Or maybe somebody who has such validation with acceptable "organization name" will be interested in signing installers. This would be way easier.

[Ray Donnelly]

Thanks.

https://code.google.com/p/sumatrapdf/wiki/WhyNo64bitBuilds

I bet their real reason was "we've got too many other things to do".

.. anyway with MSYS2, Cygwin and MSYS1, all DLLs must share a single address space, so in that case a 4GB limit can become a real problem (autorebase just wraps the addresses causing overlap eventually). For that reason using 64bit for MSYS2 (thanks to the Cygwin teams efforts) is a much better idea.

Also for 'native' software, MinGW-w64 64bit supports SEH exceptions (Borland has a patent on 32bit SEH) and they are much faster than SJLJ and less buggy than Dwarf-2 exceptions.

[Alexx83]

Iljau, I add you to developers. You can start work on front page. I think you first need read:
https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Project%20Web%20Services/

[David Macek]

We later got a GitHub site up and now it's even on http://msys2.org. :)