[Bug-guile-ncurses] Building guile-ncurses on MS-Windows using MinGW

[Eli Zaretskii]

[Please CC me on responses, as I'm not subscribed to this list.]

I've built guile-ncurses 1.4 today natively on MS-Windows using
MinGW.  Here are the problems I discovered:

1. Compilation fails in ncurses/:

     /bin/sh ../libtool  --tag=CC   --mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. 
 -I ../lib -Id:/usr/include/guile/2.0 -Id:/usr/include      -DGUCU_DLL 
-DGUCU_DLL_EXPORTS   -g -O2 -MT libguile_ncurses_la-unicode.lo -MD -MP -MF 
.deps/libguile_ncurses_la-unicode.Tpo -c -o libguile_ncurses_la-unicode.lo 
`test -f 'unicode.c' || echo './'`unicode.c
     libtool: compile:  gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. -I ../lib 
-Id:/usr/include/guile/2.0 -Id:/usr/include -DGUCU_DLL -DGUCU_DLL_EXPORTS -g 
-O2 -MT libguile_ncurses_la-unicode.lo -MD -MP -MF 
.deps/libguile_ncurses_la-unicode.Tpo -c unicode.c  -DDLL_EXPORT -DPIC -o 
.libs/libguile_ncurses_la-unicode.o
     unicode.c:30:22: fatal error: langinfo.h: No such file or directory
     compilation terminated.

   This is because MinGW doesn't have langinfo.h and the nl_langinfo
   function which unicode.c wants to use.  I suggest to import the
   nl_langinfo module from gnulib to solve this (I did that manually
   to overcome this problem).

2. Link failure in ncurses/:

     .libs/libguile_ncurses_la-form_type.o: In function `print_form':
     guile-ncurses-1.4\ncurses/form_type.c:372: undefined reference to 
`asprintf'
     .libs/libguile_ncurses_la-form_type.o: In function `print_field':
     guile-ncurses-1.4\ncurses/form_type.c:204: undefined reference to 
`asprintf'
     .libs/libguile_ncurses_la-menu_type.o: In function `print_item':
     guile-ncurses-1.4\ncurses/menu_type.c:173: undefined reference to 
`asprintf'
     .libs/libguile_ncurses_la-menu_type.o: In function `print_menu':
     guile-ncurses-1.4\ncurses/menu_type.c:318: undefined reference to 
`asprintf'
     .libs/libguile_ncurses_la-panel_type.o: In function `print_panel':
     guile-ncurses-1.4\ncurses/panel_type.c:186: undefined reference to 
`asprintf'
     .libs/libguile_ncurses_la-type.o:
     guile-ncurses-1.4\ncurses/type.c:1030: more undefined references to 
`asprintf' follow
     collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status

   This is because MinGW doesn't have asprintf.  Again, importing the
   asprintf module from gnulib should solve this.

3. Compilation error in tools/:

     gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I..  -Id:/usr/include/guile/2.0 -Id:/usr/include  
 -I ../lib  -DLOCALEDIR=\"d:/usr/share/locale\"      -g -O2 -MT shell.o -MD -MP 
-MF .deps/shell.Tpo -c -o shell.o shell.c
     shell.c:37:21: fatal error: termios.h: No such file or directory
     compilation terminated.
     Makefile:451: recipe for target `shell.o' failed
     make[2]: *** [shell.o] Error 1

   The shell program is entirely unportable to native MS-Windows, and
   needs X to run anyway.  I solved this by using "make -k" to build
   regardless.  I think the build process should simply not build the
   shell on MinGW.

4. "make install-strip" disregards prefix= and installs the Scheme
   files into the $prefix/ tree.  This is a minor annoyance, as I'm
   used to creating a binary distro like this:

     make install-strip prefix=/foo/bar

   where /foo/bar is an empty directory.  Then I have a tree with
   distributed files ready to be tarred under /foo/bar.  In
   guile-ncurses, all the products are installed under /foo/bar,
   except the *.scm files, which are installed under $prefix as
   specified during the configure step.

   Solution: move by hand to the installation directory.

5. The shared library is installed into incorrect directory.

   It is installed in $prefix/lib, which is wrong for Windows: the
   shared libraries on Windows should be installed into $prefix/bin.

6. Trying to use the hello world program, Guile cannot load the
   guile-ncurses DLL:

     While executing meta-command:
     ERROR: In procedure dynamic-link: file: "libguile-ncurses", message: "The 
specified module could not be found."

   This is because it looks literally for libguile-ncurses.dll,
   without the version number, whereas the shared library that is
   installed is called libguile-ncurses-8.dll.  I hacked curses.scm to
   use libguile-ncurses-8 instead (and likewise with other *.scm
   files), but I think there should be a better solution to this
   issue.  Perhaps this is even something to discuss on guile-devel,
   as it's a general problem with such naive loading of extensions.

7. A lot of warnings when curses.scm is auto-compiled the first time
   it is loaded into Guile:

     ;;; ncurses/curses.scm:1116:36: warning: possibly unbound variable 
`%acs-block'
     ;;; ncurses/curses.scm:1117:36: warning: possibly unbound variable 
`%acs-board'
     ;;; ncurses/curses.scm:1118:36: warning: possibly unbound variable 
`%acs-btee'
     ;;; ncurses/curses.scm:1119:36: warning: possibly unbound variable 
`%acs-bullet'
     ;;; ncurses/curses.scm:1120:36: warning: possibly unbound variable 
`%acs-ckboard'
     ;;; ncurses/curses.scm:1121:36: warning: possibly unbound variable 
`%acs-darrow'

   etc.

   These don't happen when I compile the *.scm files with guild.

   Btw, I suggest to compile the *.scm files at "make install" time.

That's all; I hope these comments will be helpful for improving
guile-ncurses in future releases.

On the positive side, I can report that the demo program that shows a
phrase in colors did work after I overcame all these problems.

Thanks!