From: Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...>
Date: 2008-01-04T07:36:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows Compilation Madness


On Jan 3, 2008, at 5:00 PM, James Tucker wrote:
>> Windows Source Distribution
>>  -- lack of prevalent compiler and common build-chains makes it
>>     difficult to author and distribute a source code package
>>     that builds and installs correctly in all the different
>>     Windows environments
>
> No. The build scripts themselves, are ok. The backing toolchains  
> are an issue.

I wasn't actually differentiating between the two.  Having common  
scripts but not common tool chains isn't really all that useful,  
right?  It still means that you've got n-different contexts to work  
with instead of 1.

> There are plenty of prevalent compilers, but there are more options  
> than on *nix, and the options have more differences.

OK, my dictionary says that I should have said 'no prevailing  
compiler' as in one particular compiler that prevails among all the  
prevalent ones.
Contrast this to *nix platforms were there is generally just a single  
compiler choice and not a choice among many prevalent ones.

>>  -- the lack of a common build-chain means that it can be
>>     very difficult to mix-and-match 3rd party source distributions,
>>     which is a much rarer problem in *nix environments.
>
> Source distributions are fine. Again, it's purely a tool chain and  
> version linkage issue.

OK, but for a source distribution to be useful in a wide variety
of environments, the tool chain must be consistent, which it isn't
on Windows.  I suppose trivial applications can be distributed that
don't have a dependency on a tool chain but I wasn't talking about
them.  Maybe we are just partitioning the problem space with
different terminology but if source distributions worked well
under Windows we wouldn't be having this discussion, right?

Thanks for all the Windows folks who have been patient with my
questions.

Gary Wright