[wgcc-dev] wgcc 2.1.0 released

[Duft M. <Mar...@sa...>]

Hi together!

I'm proud to announce the 2.1.0 "stabilizing release" of wgcc. For more
info read below.

Cheers, Markus
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

wgcc is a cross-compiler tool primarily written for Microsoft's Interix.
Its primary purpose is to produce native Windows binaries (internally
using the Microsoft Tool chain), and to mimic the behaviour of the GNU
compiler collection. This means that wgcc understands many of GCC's
command line arguments, and in most cases delivers the same results as
expected, sometimes manipulating the underlying tool's input and output.

Even though wgcc was written for Interix only, it can be used on native
Windows (without Interix), and other Systems, like Cygwin. The only
restriction is that on Platforms other than Interix, only Windows style
paths are understood. With the release of version 2.0.1 this changed.
Now Cygwin too is able to convert paths correctly. On Interix (and now
Cygwin) wgcc automatically converts UNIX style paths to Windows style
ones (i.e. /wgcc to C:\SFU\wgcc).

wgcc abstracts away lots of inconveniences that are introduced by
building static libraries, shared libraries (DLL's) and executables with
any possible combination of those three. When using wgcc both static and
shared libraries behave exactly the same on Windows, and this makes tons
of defines unnecessary. The only thing that still has to be done is to
give all Data symbols (i.e. Variables) an import attribute
(__declspec(dllimport)) when using them (i.e. in the library header
files) in an executable. For a simple example take a look at the file
tests/shared.test inside the wgcc distribution.

Teh 2.1.0 release of wgcc is a "stabilizing" release, means that there
are not many new features, but the existing code has been improved.
Since there was some feedback from 2.0.5 (finally) i could find some
memory leaks and performance hits. Especially the performance of the
2.1.0 release has been improved a lot (by about factor 2 to 3, means
it's up to three times faster).
This release of wgcc has a fairly small memory footprint which should be
in most cases under 10 MB. Also if the configuration is tweaked a little
(turn dependency tracking off) wgcc takes just between 70 and 150 ms (!)
for all its work (excluding external tasks like the compiler). This time
was taken while compiling with a fairly long command line under full (90
- 100%) CPU load.

Libtool has been removed from the wgcc and ucl packages, since it would
be an overhead. This only means that building wgcc is a little faster
now, and has no influence on the libtool patches shipped from the wgcc
page.

To continue improving wgcc and pxwc packages, we now need your help in
testing them. Please download wgcc and try to compile your software
using it. If something goes wrong please contact mduft or open an issue
using the Sourceforge Tracker at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=3D158081&atid=3D806404, or ask =
your
questions at the forums at
http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=3D158081.

You can browse the Subversion Repository here:
http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/interix-wgcc/trunks/

Documentation can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D158081&package_id=
=3D
203917&release_id=3D446943
Source Packages can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D158081&package_id=
=3D
177049&release_id=3D445894
The Patch for Libtool can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D158081&package_id=
=3D
196163&release_id=3D446510
The PXWC library can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D158081&package_id=
=3D
195309&release_id=3D449425