RE: autoconf in pure MSVC environment?

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Daniel Reed wrote:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> )
> ) works ok on UNIX because the tools are getting built, tested, and
> ) updated all the time.  That testing never happens on Windows, so to
> ) quote Chinua Achebe, "Things Fall Apart."
>
> If there is a specific issue with a specific Cygwin package,
> please either
> bring it up with the package maintainer or bring it up on one
> of the two
> Cygwin mailing lists where this would be relevant (cygwin@ or
> address@hidden).

It has happened on too many projects to be a specific issue.  It is the
general nature of the Windows beast.  Poor support for UNIX-oriented
projects because of little vetting.  There are thousands of open source
projects available on Sourceforge alone.  I spent a lot of last year
downloading and trying to build a lot of 'em.  They cannot all be dealt
with by talking to project maintainers - asssuming the maintainters were
even willing to do something.

The better approach is to have a universal tool which aids in fixing the
problem.  I said, after last time, I will not try to tackle these
problems by manual labor again.  Either get some kind of Autoconf going
for MSVC, or give up on moving code from UNIX to MSVC as not usually
worth the bother.

> Cygwin almost certainly is the correct long-term answer to
> your problem.

I don't agree.  Even if Cygwin / Mingw builds get a lot better, there
are still valid reasons to port to MSVC.  And, I don't see that
arbitrary open source authors will *ever* be forced to provide good
build maintenance, just because of a mailing list about Cygwin packaging
admonishing them to do so.

> the latter
> duplicates the work put into systems like Cygwin.

One difficulty I've run into in Cygwin packaging, is they seem to
hardwire compiler *.h paths.  If I could easily retarget them to use
MSVC, I've missed something.  Any suggestions?


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
                                - Ed Mckenzie