Re: Building bison 2.1 on Windows

[lfinsto1]

> I'm attempting to build bison 2.1 on Windows with both mks and cygwin.
> I've gotten a little ways with mks and am just starting with cygwin.
> Several questions:

Aren't there binaries available?  This would be much easier.  If you're
just starting with Cygwin, you might want to consider using DJGPP instead,
or in addition to it.

I installed Bison for use in combination with Visual Studio (much against
my will) this way some months ago, and it was perfectly simple.  I don't
recall what version of Bison I was using.  However, if the Bison and/or
DJGPP maintainers ported one version, I expect they'd be willing to port
the most recent one.


>
> First question - Since there is no Makefile.nt or Visual Studio files in
> the tarball, I'll assume that I should be proceeding running configure, et
> cetera, just as if I was on a real Unix system.  True?  I know that the
> gzip package includes an NT makefile, but I do not see anything similar in
> bison's package.

I don't recall, but I seem to remember some `configure' or other failing
on my system.  DJGPP does provide a (Unix-like) shell, but I never
bothered to do so.  I don't think it's needed.  I don't know how Cygwin
handles this.

>
> I've unpacked bison-2.1.tar.gz and have attempted to run
> ./bison-2.1/configure.  I'm running into problems with finding what is
> needed to build (the compiler, et cetera).  I'm going to muck about more
> with my makefiles.  I already had to specify a different configure cache
> file since /dev/null is not real on Windows as it is on Unix.  Am I
> proceeding in the correct direction?

I rather doubt it.

>
> If anyone has insight about building bison 2.1 on Windows, I'd appreciate
> your input.  Or if I'm missing some webpages where this insight already
> exists (googling hasn't found me exactly what I am looking for), please
> send pointers.

I think downloading binaries would be the best way to proceed.  It was not
difficult to integrate a Bison parser with a Visual C++ program, but I've
forgotten the details.  I eventually gave up on Visual C++ and used GCC on
the Windows machine instead.  This project is currently on ice.

This is the DJGPP website, if the Bison project doesn't provide binaries
for Windows anywhere (e.g., on an ftp server or at Savannah):
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/

Laurence Finston