Chris Melville wrote:
>
> > Cygwin gets you all the GNU build tools, in particular make, automake,
> > autoconf, etc, not to forget gcc. I'd bet a small sum that at this
> > point you could even dispense with VC++ and use gcc/mingw instead.
> >
> > But only a small sum ;-).
>
> I'm sure I've seen folk asking "can I use GCC to build Moz on Win32" in
> other forums, the standard answer being "many have tried, none have
> succeeded".
>
I'm sure that's the case. It sounds like the Mozilla build system isn't
autoconf/automake based, so all bets are off at that point, and that's
probably the main problem. Mingw has had some C++ issues until recently
that I'm sure haven't helped matters either (well, wait, they were
primarily STL issues...).
> Personally speaking, if I were starting off a big open-platform project I'd
> design the build environment first, produce simple tools for it then make
> sure that each supported platform got a native version of them (no foreign
> shells, emulators, simulators, perambulators, etc).
Agreed, but you end up reinventing the wheel again (if I'm reading you
right). Installing Cygwin is a completely painless procedure for
anybody these days, and that gets you all GNU build tools, giving you a
very powerful common base to start from. And you can cross-compile
relatively painlessly to boot.
> Then there'd be a
> wrapper project for each of the major IDEs. This can be quite a big job in
> itself, but it sure pays back later.
>
Something seriously needs to be done in this area in the entire
industry, some form of common "project definition file". Dreaming I
know, hell we don't even have common shells or makefile syntax, but at
least the concepts of those are vaguely similar across tools...
> Don't wish to sound critical of the Moz build environment though, I am quite
> impressed that it works at all given all the bits and peices needed, most of
> which are foreign to Win32 (my work platform).
>
> Cheers,
> Chris.
