Re: Chances of build success on non-Unix platforms (read: dos/win32)

[Guido Draheim]

Es schrieb John Poltorak:
> 
> Is there any place I can search to find if an app has been succesfully
> built with autoconf+friends on a non-Unix platform?
> 
> I'm thinking of trying to build Tar 1.13 and see refences to DOS but have
> no way of telling whether they are purely historical, (going back to the
> last millenium  :-) ) or whether there is any likelihood of success
> nowadays.
> 

note the difference between the build platform and the platform the
resulting binary shall run. To *build* a autoconf'ed project under
non-unix platforms, you need to install a build-environment that has
the most common unixish fileutils available, esp. "sh" and "sed".
The most common today are cygwin and mingw, and I don't remember if
dj delorie is still maintaining his environment, which also had a
dos variant, but I thinkt dos is too outdated now.

The other part is resulting binary, and the question whether a
specific unixish project (like "tar") will compile for it. Note
here about cygwin which will bring a unixish personality to
windows but at the same time it limits interoperability with
other win32 programs (it's not impossible though). It would 
need the project source to be ready-made for the pecularities
of the win32 platform APIs, and in many cases like gnu tar,
you will find somewhere a patch that adds the missing win32
ifdefs.

To get it straight - you don't need to run windows to compile
a program for the win32 platform - use a crossgcc, for the
linux-to-mingw32 part you'll even find prepacked rpms, or just
build one yourself (e.g. on solaris) it isn't *that* complicated.
So, if you just want to have a win32 tar, you don't need to
leave a typical unix environemnt, and you are saved from
installling one for win32, in order to create a win32 binary.

hope this sheds some light on it,
read the rest on at the mingw and cygwin pages,
and if there are problems with the resulting
binary, come back, and ask IN THE LIBTOOL mailinglist
since you SHOULD REALLY use libtool when trying to
mess with the win32 platform.

cheers,
-- guido                                    http://freespace.sf.net/guidod
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