Re: Building Win32 apps on Linux? (To Cygwin users on the list...)

[Toralf Lund <toralf at procaptura dot com>]

Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 02, 2005 at 08:33:01PM +0200, Toralf Lund wrote:
>  
>
> > Christopher Faylor wrote:
> >    
> >
> > > On Fri, Sep 02, 2005 at 08:03:16PM +0200, Toralf Lund wrote:
> > >      
> > >
> > > > I'm still not sure I see the full picture, though.  Does this mean that
> > > > actual cross build setup is readily available,
> > > >        
> > > No.
> > >
> > >      
> > It's tempting to ask why not...
> >    
>
> Yes, it's good that you didn't do something so pushy and rude as to ask
> someone why they only chose to provide hundreds of megabytes of free
> stuff and didn't choose to go to the extra effort of providing you with
> some extra, tangentially related stuff, which would suit your specific
> needs.
>  
Yeah, telling a software developer about my needs as a user would be 
quite rude, wouldn't it?

Snide remarks aside, though, if I had asked it would only have been 
because I thought the answer might be "we just never thought of it" or 
"we believed nobody would want it." And because I assumed it wouldn't 
involve a lot of work.

> > But I guess there must be someone who has released binaries for this,
> > if I decide that's what I want.
> >    
>
> Or, you could build your own, this being the crossgcc mailing list,
> where this sort of thing is dealt with on a daily basis.
>  
Which is precisely why I think that doing it all over again is perhaps 
quite pointless.

> > > I just built a cross-compiler for my system.  Normal users just run
> > > gcc on windows.
> > >      
> > Aren't the normal users those who have to support multiple platforms?
> >    
>
> Normal users login to systems and type "configure; make; make install".
>  
Yes, but would they do that on MSWin unless they also have to maintain 
software on other platform where that build style is more common?

Again, I didn't mean to be overly critical here. All I was trying to say 
was that I'd be surprised if a large proportion of your user base 
wouldn't want a full cross building setup, if you chose to include it.

> That's what you get with cygwin.
>
>  
>
> > It seems to me that it must be better to have the same build host for
> > most or all of them...
> >    
>
> The goal of cygwin is to provide a linux environment for Windows not a
> cross compilation environment to Windows.  FWIW, the former is very much
> more ambitious than the latter.
>  
Indeed. However, it does seem like you've been on the ambitions path 
already, and overcome most of the obstacles...

>  
>
> > Personally, I think I may possibly be talked into developing software
> > for Windows, but only if I don't have to do actual work under the
> > Windows environment, which I just don't like (that's why I'm here,
> > right?)
> >    
>
> I have no idea why you're here.  You're in a mailing list which, AFAICT,
> has no obvious anti-Windows bias. I haven't seen anyone here trying to
> talk you into developing software on Windows.
I think you read too much into what I said. I'm here partly because I 
rather like typing "make" to build stuff, and I would assume most 
subscribers feel the same. This is not the "native" Windows way of doing 
things. That's all there is to it, really.

>  I really doubt that
> anyone cares where you build your software.
>  
It was all just a silly aside. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the 
involved parties do care, though. "redhat.com" seems to be mentioned a 
lot in the list headers...

> > > You build a cygwin cross compiler more or less the same way as you build
> > > any cross compiler.  The standard windows libraries and headers are part
> > > of the winsup/mingw and winsup/w32api directories which are supposed to
> > > be used and automatically when you build a cross-compiler.
> > >      
> > Where do these come from? The gcc distro itself? glibc?
> >    
>
> You can check them out of CVS (I'll let you guess where you'd have to go
> to find cygwin CVS) right into a standard "devo" build tree containing
> such directories as "binutils, opcodes, gcc, gdb, etc." or you can
> download the sources from the cygwin release and install them on the
> linux system of your choice.
>  
Right. Sorry. I thought you meant "automatically" as in "those libs will 
always be there when you unpack the usual combination of GNU sources." 
(So I was a bit put off when I didn't see them anywhere.)

> > I did have a stab at building a "cross gcc" for cygwin target, but I was 
> > using my newlib-based setup for embedded platforms, which I didn't 
> > really expect to work. And I was right. The build looked promising for a 
> > while, but eventually failed due to missing stdio.h or something like 
> > that. I didn't investigate the issue further.
> >    
>
> It sounds like you need to start investigating things further.  I'd suggest
> google or the archives of this mailing list.
>  
I did search a bit before I posted to the list, obviously. As always, 
Google returned a lot of pages touching on the subject (including many 
Cygwin related pages), but truly useful information was harder to find...

> --
> Christopher Faylor			spammer? ->	aaaspam@sourceware.org
> Cygwin Co-Project Leader				aaaspam@duffek.com
> TimeSys, Inc.
>
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>  


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