From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.4 required=5.0 tests=AWL,DNS_FROM_RFC_ABUSE autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C920BC69 for ; Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:54:52 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Aq4HAIAkckdDWxLC/2dsb2JhbACBV6dp X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.24,209,1196636400"; d="scan'208";a="6049838" Received: from ip67-91-18-194.z18-91-67.customer.algx.net (HELO server1.bertec.net) ([67.91.18.194]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 26 Dec 2007 18:54:49 +0100 Received: from kuba.bertec.net (kuba.bertec.net [192.168.2.16]) by server1.bertec.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 683C1CDFB7 for ; Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:54:49 -0500 (EST) From: Kuba Ober To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: Re : Re: [Caml-list] Re: MinGW port w/o Cygwin? Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:54:44 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 (enterprise 0.20071123.740460) References: <200712200930.29585.ober.14@osu.edu> <476E7CA1.6000501@dravanet.hu> <666572260712230833j79ea3f41vc3649b6b3e17940f@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <666572260712230833j79ea3f41vc3649b6b3e17940f@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200712261254.44486.ober.14@osu.edu> X-Spam: no; 0.00; mingw:01 cygwin:01 ocaml:01 cygwin:01 mingw:01 ocaml:01 compiler:01 compiler:01 lacks:01 flags:01 separators:01 iirc:01 cheers:01 2007,:98 20,:98 On Sunday 23 December 2007, Adrien wrote: > 2007/12/20, Kuba Ober : > > I guess that Ocaml maintainers should just drop that Cygwin requirement, > > and tweak their build process to work "out of the box" with MSYS/MinGW. > > You shouldn't see cygwin as a _requirement_. > Ocaml installation from source (let the binary distributions be a > special case) use C. If there is no c compiler installed as it is > under all windows installations (I mean right after setup is > completed) ocaml simply can't be installed ; the problem is not with > ocaml or cygwin but with windows. Cygwin is not a fancy requirement > just one of the few ways to get a c compiler under windows. > > Also mingw without cygwin still lacks a lot of things. Capabilities > are there but it seems header files have not been updated in ages and > linker flags need to be different (you will often need -lws2_32 for > many C apps especially). THe right way is to update mingw headers, submit to the maintainers, and go from there. That's the OSS way. > Anyway, the result is a big headache for the developper. I perfectly > understand the ocaml team is not willing to make a complete mingw/msys > port ; it's such a mess. It's the only sane way to go. THere's no technical reason to require a unix environment to build ocaml. Big applications build on Windows just fine... > So there would be msvc, cygwin, cygwin/mingw, msys/mingw with > different configuration files for each. While such a port would be > easy to create it wouldn't be wise to create it imho ; it wouldn't > help maintaining and would create bugs along with more work for the > ocaml team. Supporting Cygwin at all is a waste IMHO. Either you run Unix or Windows, choose one and stick with it... > And then one could add a SFU port (Services For Unix) which lets you > compile ocaml without problem except that it works so well ocaml > thinks it is running under unix and uses forward-slashes as path > separators. (everything that ./configure can enable is enabled) IIRC Windows accepts forward slashes everywhere just fine. > compile with mingw just to remember last time I tried I spent two > hours. I then used sfu, cd'ed in the source directory, ./configure, > make, strip and within 90 seconds my rsync build was ready to > download. SFU is free though not free as in free speech, but when > you've spent hours on msys/mingw, you can accept anything and be > really happy with it. *) Well, all it means is that Ocaml wasn't designed to build on Windows, that's it. MSYS provides what reasonably can be provided without a Unix emulation layer. THe fact that Oaml uses a Unix-centric build system and whatnot makes things the way they are. The windows build could dispense with configure and whatnot. Cheers, Kuba