Things we ought to do to improve our packaging

[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 2013-08-08 20:01, Steve Borho wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 2:56 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com
> <mailto:adrian at cadifra.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 2013-08-08 06:37, Steve Borho wrote:
>     > One suggestion I have, if we try to automate this process in the
>     > hg/contrib folder, is that we make an attempt to drop the
>     requirement on
>     > Microsoft's C compilers and try to use recent MinGW GCCs to
>     compile the
>     > Explorer extension and the Mercurial (and other hg extension) Python
>     > extensions.
> 
>     Why?
> 
>     MSC is gratis and the standard C compiler on the Windows platform.
> 
> 
> MSFT is making it harder and harder to install the gratis VC9 compilers
> that Python 2.7 requires, that is the primary complication.

..

> Long term,
> it would be better not to be dependent on their good nature.

IMHO, rather FUD-ish.

I'd rather prefer not to depend on a new set of compiler and linker bugs
/ broken libraries/incompatibilities + install hell.


>     > We had problems with GCC some 5-6 years ago but perhaps
>     > those are all resolved now
> 
>     ..and in the mean time, "we" need a 64-bit C (C++) compiler.
> 
>     The standard Windows platform is nowadays x64.
> 
>     IIRC, last time I checked, there were still problems with MinGW for x64.
>     But it's been a while...
> 
> 
> 64bit MinGW (gcc 4.8) is pretty decent these days.

Nice to hear. So, good luck with that.

>     IIRC C-Python uses the MSC compiler as well for their Windows builds.
> 
> 
> Yep

The surely know why :-)