[Mingw-users] Re: Why is there an msys perl? [WAS: Re: building perl 5.8]

[Soren A <sor...@fa...>]

Soren A <soren_andersen=97j...@pu...> spaketh 
(on around 31 Oct 2002 in 
news:Xns92B8AAB45F7E7sorenagmaneSH@80.91.224.249):

> 
> Still, I think that there's been (for years) and will continue to be, a
> hunger out there for a standard, rational, well-documented, easy to do
> source distro to build Perl on MinGW (with the temporary -- build-time
> -- assistance of the MSYS shell, making it much easier to envision now)
> such that the Perl natively understands mixed paths (the
> D:/mypath/to/glory style) as well as back-slashed Windows command-style
> paths (D:\mypath\to\frustration). This Perl of my dreams would be built
> on the user's machine and know where all the compiler tools are, its
> Config.pm would have no imaginary garbage in it, it would be simple to
> set up and do module builds. It wouldn't have to differ hugely from how
> ActivePerl works as seen by the user, but underneath it would be built
> by gcc, NOT MSVC++, and that makes all the difference in the world for
> any but the most casual Perl user. 
> 

I am currently taking apart the build of bleadperl (for those who don't 
know, that's the Perl slang for experimental-branch Perl, they host the 
download files for the benefit of the entire Perl community at 
ActiveState.com). That means that i am minutely scrutinizing how Perl gets 
built on Cygwin (in Cygwin bash) using the gcc tools that are so closely 
akin to MinGW tools.

The idea is that I will be positioned to take the insight I've gleaned from 
doing this and use it to explore building of this "MinGW Perl" that I've 
been describing above. A build that doesn't involve 'dmake' or weird and 
increasingly anachronistic Win32-isms like Makefiles that only work on 
'nmake'. A build that uses what's mainline for MinGW: GNU 'make', GCC (cc, 
as, ld, etc.).

I invite those who are interested in this to put a few cents in (speak up, 
make a comment).

  Soren A

-- 
Yes, it's really Sören, not Soren.