s...@pobox.com wrote:
Ocean> You misunderstand. If he's successfully running it with Windows
Ocean> 7 - 32 bit, you can't say that SpamBayes definitively works with
Ocean> Windows 7, because you don't know if it works on the 64 bit
Ocean> version. You have to know it works fine on both before you can
Ocean> make a unilateral declaration like that.
I don't use Windows, however...
That's a shame. It is a great OS that 90% of the world uses for their
desktop OS. :P
(Flamebait...)
If he's installing a released version of SpamBayes (1.0.4 or 1.1.a4) he
should be getting a Python interpreter as part of the installer. To the
best of my knowledge neither Mark, Tim, Tony nor anybody else who ever
released a SpamBayes-on-Windows installer ever bundled a 64-bit version of
the interpreter with it. If a 32-bit interpreter will work on a 64-bit
machine you're home free. If not, then it would have bombed if he was
running 64-bit Windows 7. I conclude that either he was running on a 32-bit
version of Win7 or a 32-bit version of the Python interpreter will work on a
64-bit version of Win7. (Can someone with more knowledge of Windows than me
-- that is, with *any* knowledge of Windows -- confirm or deny this
conclusion?) As far as I know there is nothing specific to 32- or 64-bit
architectures in the SpamBayes source code itself. All 32- or 64-bit
dependencies would be in the binary code of the Python executable.
Skip
Hello. I have in-depth knowledge about the differences between 32-bit
and 64-bit Windows.
When it comes to drivers (for hardware), the driver has to match the OS.
32-bit drivers for 32-bit OSes, 64-bit drivers for 64-bit OSes. No
exceptions.
For software, Windows does a lot of funky stuff when doing 32-bit vs.
64-bit. For 64-bit programs, all DLLs and the EXE must be native 64-bit
DLLs/EXEs. In addition, Windows uses the 64-bit Windows Registry (but
can be switched using some API calls). The entire chain MUST be 64-bit.
The Windows loader will fail to load any 32-bit component. The PE
File Format (of which I am intimately familiar with) declares whether a
component is 32-bit or 64-bit.
When the Windows loader encounters a 32-bit program under a 64-bit OS,
it enters a sort of virtual machine environment known as WOW64
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64). This is similar in nature to how
we moved from 16-bit to 32-bit years ago (but less stupid). The 32-bit
Windows Registry is used and some file APIs are redirected (e.g.
'C:\Program Files\' becomes 'C:\Program Files (x86)\'). Again, a 32-bit
program aware of the 64-bit environment can call certain APIs and change
this behavior.
However, there is perfect isolation between 32-bit and 64-bit. A 64-bit
program cannot load a 32-bit component into its environment and vice
versa. The Windows loader prevents it. So, in-process, apartment
threaded COM objects (such as the Outlook interface for Spambayes) have
to match the application that is loading the object. Here's an article
on the topic of 32-bit vs 64-bit COM objects that is worth reading:
http://www.dnjonline.com/article.aspx?id=jun07_access3264
My personal experience is that, in most cases, Windows applications can
simply be recompiled as 64-bit and it should work as a native 64-bit
application. The only issues that I've run across are: Bad programming
and assembler with optimized code for a 32-bit platform.
In the case of Spambayes, I don't see why recompiling for 64-bit would
be much a problem. It looks like Python currently has two separate
versions: One for AMD64 and one for IA-64 (instead of a unified build).
You aren't doing anything exotic (except for Outlook), so a 64-bit
build is possible with potentially minimal effort.
--
Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President
Ph: 517-803-4197
*NEW* MyTaskFocus 1.1
Get on task. Stay on task.
http://www.CubicleSoft.com/MyTaskFocus/
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