gEDA-dev: FYI: windows build attempt from s.e.design

[Bob Paddock]

I'm not sure if gEDA is the topic of discussion in this thread
or PCB.  I've not spent much time on trying to get to gEDA to work
under Windows, I have spent some time on building PCB
under Windows in the past, so hence my PCB comments here:

On Tuesday 29 May 2007 17:50, Peter Clifton wrote:

> MSYS is the Unixy like environment, shell etc.. for Windows. You need
> mingw to do the compiling. If you're working under Cygwin, there is a
> difference - but not one i'm familiar with.
> 
> Mingw is for making a native windows .exe which is what I did. Compiling
> with gcc under cygwin makes a cygwin program.

If you put Mingw in your path first via the Cygwin environment
then you can compile Mingw programs in Cygwin and end up with
a Mingw.exe program.  It may need linked to the mingw.dll, but sometimes
you can avoid that.   Building under Cygwin is slow, sometime painfully slow,
but it does have a better selection of the standard tools that you are
use to in a Linux like environment.

> > If you cross-compile, you have to hack the NSIS build script,

Let me know what needs done to the NSIS script? I use NSIS extensively
at work under windows (Windows is the Boss choice not mine).
I do want to change it have a icon etc., which I hope
I have time to start working on the week after next.

It needs to be changed so that the version number is part
of the install process, so that multiple versions can be
installed on the Windows box at the same time, and some other things
that I've learned from working with NSIS.

NSIS is supported under Linux as well, but I've not used it that way
yet.  http://nsis.sourceforge.net/

Dan did a great job on the little I as able to give him to go on.

> > and copy 
> > the generated footprint library from a native build of PCB, into the
> > win32 build.

Last time, which was a while ago, I used PCB under windows it had
issues with End Of Line characters in the library and some of the
actual PCB files.   Carriage Returns in files would confuse PCB
at times.  Standard PCB files end with Line Feeds.
Is there going to be a interchangeability problem here
between Windows and the rest of the world?
MACs also use a different End Of Line, but I don't recall what it is.

> > Hmm, I'm afraid my limited knowledge of this game again shows, save time, saves the compiling of gtk? 

You should not have to compile gtk on Winodws, use the GIMP GTK port, as that installs natively.

http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html

Headers might be a problem for compiling, but that should make a windows binary installer easier, tho
it is two packages the user would need to install.

> > Errr, at the risk of sounding daft, M4,

I use DJ's djgpp packages for M4, Perl, etc. under Windows.
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/  They work much better (faster)
than Cygwin, and a lot less to install, but I don't think you can do a complete build
within that environment.  DJ have you ever tried?  I did
a long time again and failed, don't recall why.


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