Chris Wellons8 min readintermediate
What's been going on in w64devkit the past year
Summary
This post details a year of significant updates to w64devkit, a Windows development kit, including enhanced release security with code signing and immutability, and a multilib x64 toolchain. It also introduces new build tools like CMake, Ninja, and Ccache, alongside a custom C11 threads implementation and improvements to Binutils and GCC.
- All w64devkit EXEs and DLLs are now code-signed, and releases are immutable via GitHub Actions for enhanced security.
- The x64 release is now multilib, compiling for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, simplifying cross-compilation.
- Binutils now automatically upgrades to the bigobj COFF format as needed, resolving issues with large C++ projects and Go toolchains.
- New tools like CMake, Ninja, Ccache, NSIS, and Zstandard are included, with CMake defaulting to Ninja for faster builds.
Windows developers using MinGW-w64 will find this update crucial for improved security, toolchain flexibility, and access to modern build system features.
7/10
