Re: mods for compiling perl && perl common packages

[epeschko at den-mdev1 (Ed Peschko)]

> MS uses the following extensions heavily in it's headers:
>
>   - anonymous structs/unions in C headers
>   - push/pop packing attributes (SysV pragma with a twist)
>   - attributes all over the place (C++ parser has serious problems with
>     this particular issue, and almost all the headers can make it choke).
>   - and a few other misc ones
>
> The other biggie was the DLL import/export, but that was recently added
> and will be part of egcs-1.1.
>
> I have patches for most of these extensions from various contributors, but
> I don't know when/if these will get into the standard egcs/fsf releases.
 
I actually don't really mind if they never get into the standard egcs/fsf
releases (although they probably should, for pragmatic reasons); 
do you have any built binaries with these patches added?
 
> Linker is a different story altogether. The GNU binary utilities currently
> cannot handle MS .lib formats due to a variety of  reasons; again, I have
> patches, but these *will not* get incorporated since the person who
> contributed these does not want to assign copyright or sign waiver, but
> rather has put them in the public domain. 
 
Again, if you had patches to make this work, I'd like to have them as well.
This would be a big issue for making the perl built by EGCS actually workable,
since it couldn't compile all extensions and I'd have to fill in the blanks
with VC++.

I'm assuming EGCS is under copyleft.
 
I really don't care about lawyer issues - all I want to have is a compiler
that I can put on the CD of my book, make it compile perl and associated
extensions cleanly, and thank the egcs folks *profusely* for removing the 
dependency on compiler manufacturers that perl currently has.

Right now, it compiles the perl code cleanly, but not the extensions. I can
deal with a patched-up version now, label it 'experimental', and on the 
third printing put a more stable, worked-out version which cleanly handles the
above issues.

Anyways, I'll take the issue to the 'other list' for now. Thanks for listening,
and if you could forward where I could pick up patched versions which help
EGCS with VC++, I'd appreciate it.

Ed

(PS: is there a built-in compiler define which labels the GCC compiler as GCC? 
ie:

my_header.h
----
#ifdef __GCC__
#include <windows.h>
#endif

)