What's been going on in w64devkit the past year

The past year has been exciting for w64devkit, a software distribution maintained by Peter0x44. Peter0x44 joined as co-maintainer and brought many improvements to the project. Release packaging is now signed, with all EXEs and DLLS in w64devkit code-signed using Peter0x44's key. This has resulted in fewer security issues for users.

MSYS2 adopted Peter0x44's signing tool, aas-sign, which is now included in w64devkit releases. Build automation has been established using GitHub Actions, ensuring a transparent release process. Release immutability has been enabled, locking in release artifacts to prevent any modifications. The x64 release is now a "multilib" toolchain, allowing compilation for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.

The standard COFF object format now supports up to 4 billion sections, overcoming previous limitations. Bintutils has been patched to produce bigobj by default, making it compatible with simpler linkers and auto-detection scripts. Some features, such as the switch from -Os to -O2 and the inclusion of CMake, Ninja, CMake debugger, CCache, and Git worktrees, have been added to improve performance and workflow.