Re: MinGW (Was: Re: PROPOSAL: Variation on an Alternate policy forobsoleting targets)

[Ranjit Mathew <rmathew at hotmail dot com>]

Stephan T. Lavavej wrote:
> I'm trying to learn. I've managed to successfully build 3.3 on GNU/Linux,
> but haven't been able to build any version of gcc on MSYS/MinGW (whether
> MinGW-patched or not).
>
> I don't entirely understand CVS yet and I have no clue how diffs/patches
> work (mechanically, not conceptually). I'm trying to learn, though. When
> MinGW gcc 3.3 is released, I'll see if I can bootstrap it, and I'll report
> any problems I encounter.

In GCC 3.3, things aren't that bad at all for MinGW. Except for
a minor glitch:

    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.devel/561

GCC 3.3 builds out of the box (C/C++) for MinGW, and is
quite usable as is.

If you are willing to work on Linux (and I guess you are, since
you have already compiled 3.3 for Linux), you might find this
document that I'd written a while ago, useful for this purpose:

    http://ranjitmathew.tripod.com/phartz/gcj/bldgcj.html

The two step process might seem a bit roundabout but amazingly
is almost twice as fast as a native bootstrap on Windows (for
C/C++/Java)!

If you're not interested in GCJ (Java), leave out the "java"
in "--enable-languages=c,c++,java" in the configure scripts.

If you are however, do get this cross-configury patch for
libgcj before you start:

    http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java-patches/2003-q2/msg00111.html

If you'd rather wait for the "mingw-local" patchset to also
be published before you venture into this, hang on for a
while longer.

The "mingw-local" patchsets are published to the MinGW SF
repository as soon as a MinGW GCC release is made.

Hope this helps.

Ranjit.

--
Ranjit Mathew          Email: rmathew AT hotmail DOT com

Bangalore, INDIA.      Web: http://ranjitmathew.tripod.com/