Now that Vlad has landed the amazing support for compiling with Visual
C++ instead of the mingw gcc toolchain, I'd like to propose that we
remove mingw from our automation, documentation, and support. There
are a few reasons:
1) Python is a total crazy mess. Users get messed up with the three
(3) different pythons installed, and we even have to ask them to
globally rename one of them.
2) Tracking mingw versions is pretty rough. The recent gcc update ICEs
in spidermonkey. They keep adding / removing / changing their launch
shortcuts, bitrotting our documentation.
3) Packaging. Figuring out which set of curiously-licenesed DLLs we
need to package up in our Windows installer is a challenge (much
easier in the MSVC case b/c we can merge in the usual MSM or point at
a different MSI & check for the installed product).
That said, I know that there are a few benefits on the mingw side:
1) Better gcc.
2) Contributors to the build / automation stuff can "fake it until
they make it" and hope that the macOS/Linux scripts they write just
happen to work on Windows in mingw.
3) Somebody might have a real mingw {something} that wants to include
Servo bits, and if we aren't testing mingw, it will almost definitely
break in the future.
Do people have opinions one way or another on this? I'm not dead-set
on removing it, and could definitely be convinced to just switch the
default to MSVC and hide the mingw documentation but keep testing it
if there are compelling reasons to do so.
- Lars
_______________________________________________
dev-servo mailing list
dev-servo@lists.mozilla.org
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-servo
