Re: installing gcc on winnt

[Andris Pavenis <pavenis at latnet dot lv>]

On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Mumit Khan wrote:

> The configure.bat et al are really for MSDOS/DJGPP based compiler, and
> not really appropriate for Windows-based ones. 

configure.bat is a relic from pre GCC-2.8 time. It's no more used to
configure gcc for DJGPP. There is also something about WinNT in that file
but I'm afraid it's terribly outdated.

> I have been working on 
> getting a complete native user-toolchain that will allow you to build 
> gcc natively on windows, and now it's quite doable. I'm hoping to 
> announce this sometime soon, as soon as I'm home for more than a few days 
> at a time! This toolchain is built using a port of GNU C Library 
> (v 2.1.2), which is the brainchild of of Douglas Hunt, and I've been 
> tweaking it here and there. 
> 
> Here're some of the issues:
> 
> - autoconf: 
>   * Assumes ':' as the PATH separator.
>   * Assumes that `test -f prog' works if prog.exe exists.
> 
>   I've added code to handle both cases. There is one lingering
>   issue where autoconf uses ':' to separate sources and targets,
>   such as `Makefile:foo.in', but I'll look at that soon.
> 
> - Makefile.in's for most packages: 
>   * GCC Makefiles are pretty well done, except for a few missing
>     $(build_exeext) for generated programs. Also use mkinstalldirs
>     in `installdirs' target instead of the overly complex shell
>     script.
>   * Various shell fragments used by Makefiles get confused when you have
>     a colon in pathname. Chill Make-lang.in for example uses ':' in
>     sed patterns, which can be changed to '|' or ',', both of which
>     are unlikely to be in pathnames on any platform. Easy fix.
> 
> - ltconfig: This is part of libtool:
>   * Assumes '/*' is the only pattern for absolute paths. Easy fix.
> 
> - GNU/Cygnus toplevel files, such as configure, configure.in, ltconfig
>   config-ml.in (I use a multi-lib'd configuration locally):
>   * Assumes '/*' is the only pattern for absolute paths. Easy fix.
> 
> All quite simple, but will take some coordination and advocacy to get
> these patches integrated.
> 
> After these rather minor changes are made, you can build the whole bit
> natively. I've tested on WinNT 4.0 and Win98 SE, both with gcc as the
> native compiler. To use VC++ will take a wrapper which translates Unix
> style options to VC++ style, and IMO is not worth the hassle.
> 
> > I had a report about somebody trying, and the first thing that failed
> > in 2.95 was that not all autoconf variables got replaced.

The same problems with using autoconf with DJGPP. So You can try
it from DJGPP distribution

> 
> I can believe that.
> 
> My goal is to let users build their own instead of depending on one of
> us to put together binary distributions, and hopefully we'll get there
> soon.
> 
> For those who want to test this "win32-gnu" toolchain, drop me a line.
> It's moving to SourceForge soon, so the glibc port will be available
> via anon CVS.

Andris