[PATCH] Re: patch for chicken on 64-bit windows (msys and mingw-w64)

[felix . winkelmann]

> > * As far as I can tell, none of the CHICKEN developers use Windows
> >   regularly.
>
> True.  I have it running in a VM, but I always start it with a lot of
> trepidation and I don't fully understand the OS itself.  For example,
> suddenly now "make check" has started to give a "permission denied -
> cannot delete read-lines.in" error where it's always worked before
> and I have no idea why it can't delete it.
>
> > * There are many combinations of Windows environments, leading to a
> >   great variety of ways to break stuff.
>
> They all suck in their own way.  I'm kind of thinking maybe we don't
> really need the cygwin build anymore now that there's WSL?
>
> > * We do not have automated tests on Windows.
> >
> > As a start, it would be nice to collect the information we need in a
> > wiki page (e.g., which variants of Windows we want to/can support, how
> > they differ etc.).  At this point I'm lost at the combinations of
> > different Windows things that affect the build/execution of CHICKEN.
> >
> > I'd say we need help at that so that we can improve support on Windows.
>
> That's a catch-22 though: in order to get that help, we need CHICKEN
> in a useful-enough state that people can use it on Windows.  And in
> general, out of the total set of users, only a small subset will
> actually contribute.

I agree to all of this and I think we can't go on like this. We have to cut down
support for all those Windows variants, even for Windows buffs this is a
nightmare to maintain (which we aren't).

I see only two solutions:

- Cut Windows support completely. Yeah, life is hard, but what"s the point if
   the core developers don't use and don't know it? CHICKEN will always run
   badly on Windows.

- Support a single native variant of Windows, just the
   bare minimum, provided there is some Mingw/Msys variant that works, and that
   has at least a small chance of not becoming obsolete instantly. Drop Cygwin,
   perhaps ensure WSL is a working option.

What"s the state of all those Mingw variants? Are there resources where one
can find out about this?


felix