https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57859
--- Comment #28 from Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.org --- Note that it's not just a matter of adding a symlink, the semantics are different. Until now, there were two kinds of builds:
In an "old wow64" build: wine notepad.exe -> runs 32-bit notepad wine64 notepad.exe -> runs 64-bit notepad
In a "new wow64" build: wine notepad.exe -> runs 64-bit notepad wine c:\windows\syswow64\notepad.exe -> runs 32-bit notepad wine64 doesn't exist
Starting with 10.2, all builds follow the "new wow64" scheme. This is what makes it possible to switch to new wow64 dynamically with WINEARCH=wow64. The only difference is that a pure "new wow64" build is missing the lib/wine/i386-unix directory, everything else should be identical.
Third party tools that support new wow64 mode should continue to work, they will simply see everything as new wow64.
Tools that don't support new wow64 will need to be fixed, there's no way around that.