The reverse may also be true: some tools may expect PCbuild to contain always x86 binaries, even on AMD64 - as they don't support non-x86 at all. Those tools might break if PCbuild suddenly starts containing AMD64 binaries.
I agree. However, it is my assertion that there are very few build tools which expect the layout you describe, simply as the scheme has only been around for a few months, and only in Python 2.6 builds.
That PCbuild exists and contains x86 binaries? This scheme has been in place ever since the PCbuild directory got created, several years ago!
Nope - it's not about *just* Mozilla at all, and I don't expect that I personally will be involved in any 64bit issues for that platform. That just happens to be one build process that I know about, but I except it does some "typical" things other tools might do - like executing the python executable to sniff sys.prefix and looking for (eg) "Libs" and "PCBuild" to locate libraries to link with seems fairly likely to me. Even looking for the executable itself directly in PCBuild seems likely. On an x64 platform, such tools may well find the 32bit version, and it may even seem to work - but it is unlikely to be doing what they expect.
Unless the *want* the x86 binaries, of course, which always had been in this place.
Your comments exactly reflect my concern, and I believe them relevant for people working with native binaries on x64.
No, I never cared about what binaries are "native". Instead, I wanted to see those binaries in PCbuild which had been built last. If you just built the x86 binaries, PCbuild should contain x86 binaries, even if you were running Win64. This is different from what you propose, but only slightly so (but perhaps importantly, depending on the scenario).
But as implied above, I actually have zero personal interest in this at the moment - unlike the distutils cross-compile patch, which does scratch an itch of mine. It just seems it would make life easier for people down the track - but I'm happy to let it go if your position has changed or I have mis-understood it.
OK, if we don't have an actual use case, I suggest to leave things as is. People running into this problem should propose solutions themselves. Regards, Martin