Re: Auto-tools & Win32 & Borland C++ Builder

[Axel Thimm]

On Wed, May 23, 2001 at 01:43:59PM +0200, Guido Draheim wrote:
> I would recommended to use atleast gmake and (ba)sh which are both available
> for win/dos, and having the complete gnu fileutils is not a bad idea either.

Yes, as a first step I was considering cygwin as a solid basis for sh/perl
etc. When the build system will be portable to Unix I was considering to start
morphing the code to allow gcc compilation at the very end.

> I guess it will extremly stress your technical skills to find the bits that
> assume CC=gcc and a unix-filesystem,

Yes, you are right, but I have fought battles with autoconf/automake/libtool
before. And I was *extremly delighted* about those tools (just to refer to
siblings of this thread). It's only the Windows platform that makes me
shudder.

> [...] may be there are some hints whether people have already tried with
> borland compilers.

Let's hope they are reading this list and will step forward to discuss it ;)

> However, for a pure C project, the compiler looks a bit inferior wrt. to
> gcc, so I'd switch to gcc anyway, I don't know about C++... all that I've
> heard so far, that people did stop at some point to try to get along with
> the non-gcc compiler, since the gcc compiler suite is way good enough for
> anything that is needed [...]

I hope you are right, but currently I don't see how Windows specific resources
could be handled, if not by a Borland or Microsoft resource compiler or
whatever. In any case porting a Windows product to Unix should be step by step
and porting the infrastructure for building it seems to be the best candidate
for the first step. Later one should find portable alternatives for the GUI
parts like wxWindows or QT/Harmony and start actually hacking code.

> Another scheme is of course the usage of the C++Builder as a front-end, and
> use its project-files to generate a makefile(.am/.in) that can make it build
> in environments that don't have a borland compiler.

Hm. Are those (text) formats documented? And will they stay the same after the
next Borland update? So I better place my bets on doing it right with
autotools in the first place.
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