Re: [mail] Re: Windows Build System - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

> ----- Original Message -----
Bruce Momjian replied
> > Are there no already-written converters from Makefile to VC project
> > files?

The only ones I've seen convert from Unix make files to Windows NMAKE
make files. This does not really do everything you want for several
reasons:

1) Building with make files doesn’t take advantage of the IDE for code
organization, navigation and is not the kind of support that would be
included for a "well supported" Windows product.

2) There is no automatic way to convert compiler options from gcc to
Visual C

3) There is no way to convert the concept of different build targets
(debug, release, etc.) in the way that the IDE looks at it. This is
analogous but different from the way a make file handles different
targets.

4) There was some discussion on the list that some features of Visual
C++ were required for the port itself, something about directory
replacement for include files. It is likely that this requires a special
setup for the Visual C++ project which would not be easy to handle with
just a NMAKE combatible make file.

Al Sutton replied:
> Theres a script at
> http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/other/makevcgen which may
> work, I've not tried it, but someone may want to give it a spin.

The script he describes here is one of the make file converters I
describe above.

I volunteer to write a tool in generic C to do the conversion if the
approach I outlined is deemed a good solution by those that decide such
things.

The real question is what is the motivator for a native Windows port. If
the answer is to remove CygWin dependency, that begs the further
question of why is removing CygWin dependency a good idea?

One of the reasons has to be that any obstacles that stand in the way of
getting an implementation compiled and installed will make it less
likely that developers will use it.I believe that a native Windows
version that had strong Visual C++ support will win many converts from
MySQL because it will make it much easier for someone who is looking for
an open source database to try compiling PostgreSQL. Most people looking
at open source solutions will want to at least poke around in the source
and build from that source.

If a developer can simply download the source, click on the Visual C++
project in the win32 directory and then build PostgreSQL, and they can
see that Windows is not the "poor stepchild" because the VC project is
well laid out, they will be more likely to use it for Windows projects
than MySQL which requires the CygWin tools (this means "really a Unix
product" to Windows developers).

- Curtis