Thank you again, Tony. The packages I am interested in are for wrapping c++ code, so Cpp or Cxx <https://github.com/Keno/Cxx.jl>.
I am sorry for being slow... but compiling/building libraries is new to me. "Calling 'make' at Pkg.build time", is that something along the lines of what is described here <https://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/cpp/gcc_make.html> (chapter 2)? Or I missed the ball? 2015-10-21 23:37 GMT+01:00 Tony Kelman <[email protected]>: > Looking at the original example of the Cpp.jl package, it appears to only > be needing to call `make` at Pkg.build time in order to compile a demo test > library. It should be pretty easy to modify it so it would fail gracefully > with a warning rather than an error. > > > On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 10:12:09 AM UTC-7, Tony Kelman wrote: >> >> The answer is a not-particularly-helpful "it depends." Which library are >> you interested in as a starting point? Not everything will be easy to build >> on Windows, there are often posix/unix assumptions in the code or build >> system. Usually the easiest way to get started is by installing MSYS2 >> https://msys2.github.io/ and trying to follow the normal ./configure; >> make build instructions for a library, but coming up with an end result >> that will be usable with Julia can be more subtle than that. The steps and >> challenges are a little bit different each time you try to add Windows >> compatibility to a new package, but after a few times it gets easier to >> estimate ahead of time how difficult a particular library will be. >> >> >> On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 9:12:56 AM UTC-7, Joel wrote: >>> >>> Thank you Tony for your answer. I have just recently got into Python >>> and building/compiling with MinGW-w32 and CMake (a lot of the terminology >>> still goes over my head). >>> >>> Great talk! One main question from it; using Windows, is it possible to >>> download a package from GitHub (which currently does not support Windows) >>> and compile it using MinGW (creating a windows .dll file)? If not, could >>> you point me in the right direction as to where I can read more about how >>> to go ahead? >>> >>> 2015-10-20 14:15 GMT+01:00 Tony Kelman <[email protected]>: >>> >>>> I don't know the Java ecosystem all that well, so I couldn't tell you >>>> how many developers and contributors to, say, popular Apache projects do >>>> most of their development on Windows. If you need things like >>>> high-performance linear algebra you often need to go through JNI and deal >>>> with interfacing native and JVM code. >>>> >>>> Conda.jl should be quite useful for Python dependencies via PyCall, and >>>> maybe even R packages now too. But many of the C libraries provided there >>>> for Windows are built to work with Python, meaning using the same compiler >>>> that CPython was built with on Windows - Visual Studio. Visual Studio has >>>> lots of problems with scientific software, we have very experimental hacky >>>> support for compiling the core parts of Julia (LLVM, libuv, libjulia, etc) >>>> using MSVC but it's not exactly native and far from passing tests or a >>>> first-class solution. >>>> >>>> I also haven't seen many success stories of people from outside of the >>>> Python community using Conda as a build platform for scientific libraries >>>> in a way that would be usable and compatible with Julia. I personally >>>> prefer WinRPM since it has a comparable selection of existing libraries >>>> available at >>>> https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/windows:mingw:win64, and I've >>>> found it entirely doable to add new libraries there. You have an added >>>> complication of cross-compiling, but an advantage there is package >>>> developers never have to use Windows themselves if they don't want to. >>>> Having a fully automated system to build and distribute binaries is a great >>>> advantage, and as far as I'm aware anaconda.org does not provide >>>> automated Windows buildbots on their open source plan. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 6:01:03 AM UTC-7, Páll Haraldsson wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On Saturday, October 17, 2015 at 3:29:32 AM UTC, Tony Kelman wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Why many packages don't support Windows? It's par for the course in >>>>>> open-source development, unfortunately. I gave a talk on this at JuliaCon >>>>>> in June where I discussed some of the challenges in making things work on >>>>>> Windows and how to go about fixing them, see >>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbG-rqDCNqs - if you find packages >>>>>> you use that aren't currently testing on Windows but could be, I >>>>>> encourage >>>>>> you to submit pull requests adding appveyor.yml files and suggesting the >>>>>> authors enable Windows CI testing. >>>>>> >>>>>> Julia makes it easy to wrap C and Fortran libraries so people do >>>>>> exactly that quite often, >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> You mean e.g. with Python. >>>>> >>>>> I can think of one exception (or not?): Java. >>>>> >>>>> At least in the beginning, that was one of it's point: >>>>> "write-once-run-anywhere" WORA (that assumed JVMs in web browsers..). >>>>> Strictly speaking, you can go out of the JVM, with JNI and have all the >>>>> cross-platform issues.. >>>>> >>>>> I understand WORA didn't quite work as intended, but aren't most Java >>>>> projects self-contained, only using Java code (or languages that compile >>>>> to) and Java's frameworks? >>>>> >>>>> Is it possible to replicate their (relative) success? If you use only >>>>> Julia code, you are portable already and codes just work.. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> but building most of those C and Fortran libraries on Windows is >>>>>> nontrivial. Witness Anaconda, which exists to make binary installation of >>>>>> libraries in the Python ecosystem possible so you don't need a compiler >>>>>> on >>>>>> the user's machine at install time. In Julia we tend to focus on >>>>>> individual >>>>>> platform-specific tools, like WinRPM.jl for a large number of packages on >>>>>> Windows and Homebrew.jl on Mac. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> For non-Julia code, is Conda.jl the solution? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Friday, October 16, 2015 at 3:56:44 PM UTC-7, Joel wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Thanks for the information; food for thought. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Out of curiosity, do you know why this is the case, by the way? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Den fredag 16 oktober 2015 kl. 21:00:12 UTC+1 skrev Tony Kelman: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Quite a few Julia packages are written in a way that assumes you're >>>>>>>> on Linux or Mac with build tools installed. Not all, and we're >>>>>>>> gradually >>>>>>>> fixing cases where packages can be made more portable. Best thing to >>>>>>>> do for >>>>>>>> now would be to submit a pull request adding a note to the readme that >>>>>>>> the >>>>>>>> package does not currently work on Windows, to save future users a bit >>>>>>>> of >>>>>>>> confusion. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>
