Re: Do you think this would work? Gnu-win a static swarm!

[Sven N. Thommesen]

A while back, Paul Johnson mentioned gnu-win32 from cygnus as a possible
way to get Swarm running under Bill's operating systems. To find out what
the gizmo can and cannot do, I posted a couple of questions on the
gnu-win32 list. The answers are appended here.

Seems it could conceivably be done -- but it might take a bit of work.
Assuming tcl and tk already exist under 95/NT, you'd have to port BLT and
libtclobjc, as well as installing the objC part of the gnu compiler yourself.

If anyone tries this (Paul ???), let us all know what comes of it! I think
I'll wait for the Java port ...

Cheers,
--Sven

-------------------------- message no. 1
--------------------------------------

To: "Sven N. Thommesen" <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Basic porting question 
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 23:13:04 -0500
From: Mumit Khan <address@hidden>
Sender: address@hidden
Content-Length: 2862

"Sven N. Thommesen" <address@hidden> writes:
> Forgive a newbie's question -- but I've just been made aware of the
> existence of gnu-win32, and I'd like to find out exactly what I can and
> cannot do with it. So:
> 
> (1) given that I have an application currently running under Linux, can I:
> (a) compile it under Linux with gnu-win32 libraries and produce a Win32
> executable, or must I:
> (b) move my source code to Win95 or WinNT, and compile it there ?

Can do both. I typically never build anything on win32 box, but rather
use a cross-compiler on a linux box. The only time I run into trouble
is when a configure script is not properly configured (;-) for cross
compilation; in that case, I run the configure on a '95 box (mine mounts
my linux disk using Samba, so no copying needed), and then I run make
on the linux box (I had to do it in the case of Octave, a Matlab "clone"). 

gcc et al run an order of magnitude faster under linux than under '95
on the same Ppro box.

> 
> (2) the application is written in Objective-C -- is this part of gcc
> supported?

ObjC is included in the binary distribution and builds fine from source, 
but I don't know if it actually works sine I don't use it myself. 
Hopefully someone else will follow up and provide more useful info.

> 
> (3) the application uses not only Tcl but also Tk and BLT. Will the need
> for Tk and BLT present a problem for a porting project?
> 

Tcl/tk/blt etc does not build under gnu-win32. What is supplied are the
stubs to load the Tcl and Tk DLLs built with Borland (also MSVC++?).

I assume you're building extended tcl/tk/blt interpreters, right? If so,
only the trivial ones will work in the current setup. For most part, if
you allocate the memory and Tcl deallocates it (TCL_DYNAMIC), then the
chances of your code crashing is quite high. Something to do with malloc
et al incompatibility. There was some talk about a patch to BC++ 5.0x,
but never heard more about it.

If your code uses TCL_STATIC or TCL_VOLATILE *always*, chances are things
will work just fine. You'll have to build the BLT stub yourself, but you
can follow the way Cygnus has done it for tcl/tk. 

For one of my projects, I have to build the GUI using native compiler
(BC++ 5.01), and the rest using gnu-win32.

> (4) is the linux dependence on X 'magically' transformed into Win32 GUI
> calls, or are X libraries required?
> 

Nope. X code requires X libraries. Period. You can of course use the X
libraries ported to gnu-win32. Works with b18 with Sergey's patches.
See ftp://niteroi.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/win32/X11R6.3 for more info.

> 
> Sven Thommesen
> Auburn University
> 

Regards,
Mumit -- address@hidden
http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/
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------------------------------- message no. 2 --------------------------------

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:51:56 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mumit Khan <address@hidden>
To: "Sven N. Thommesen" <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Basic porting question 
Content-Length: 1349

On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Sven N. Thommesen wrote:

> At 11:13 PM 6/25/97 -0500, Mumit Khan wrote:
> >
> >Tcl/tk/blt etc does not build under gnu-win32. What is supplied are the
> >stubs to load the Tcl and Tk DLLs built with Borland (also MSVC++?).
> >
> 
> Well, to be dogged (and dense?) about it, assuming I'm cross-compiling
> under Linux for a win32 target, which of the current linux libraries may
> continue to be used, what parts are replaced by gnu-win32, and what parts
> must be rebuilt under windows to make things work: btl, tk, tcl, libtclobjc
> [glue between objective-c and tcl] and X ?
> 

The only linux libraries that you can continue to use are the ones that
are linked to the development tools (gcc et all) or dynamically loaded
by the dev tools. For the target executables (ie., your code) CANNOT use
linux libs, but has to link to target libraries. To answer you question,
all of the above.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if you modify your tcl/tk objc code to
use Tcl (de)allocation routines instead of malloc/new/free/delete, your
code will work just fine. (Caveat: this is just a hunch, since most of
the problem seems to due to incompatibility in the memory handling btwn
gnu-win32 and Borland run-time).

> 
> -Sven
> 

regards,
Mumit -- address@hidden
http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/

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