[Mingw-users] External packages

[<ra...@ed...>]

Hallo! 

I'm starting to port my software (devloped under Unix) to Windows and choose 
to use mingw/msys for this purpose. 

However my software depends on a number of libraries/tools neither part of 
mingw nor msys. 

The are for example libpng (and later libtiff and other image libraries), 
libiconv and either libxml2 or libxerces. Since I use autoconf and use 
pkg-config for easy configuration I also need pkg-config. 

So I did some research and found a number of possible third party packages.
One potential solution may be packgaes from the gnuwin32 project. I also 
found some packages in the contect of the GIMP port to Windows. Third I 
found some PORT-packages at the mingw webpage itself. It seems that this a 
little script for compiling the necessary libraries myself. 

I tried the gnuwin32 packages but errors about not finding symbols suggest 
that this may not work with mingw. Is this true? 

I tried the GIMP packages but this failed, too, because the pkg-config 
included does not react on command line options, alsways claiming I have to 
give it the package name. 

I tried the PORT pakcgaes but they seem to require either wget (not part of 
ming, msys!?) or source package in a special directory. I tried to manually 
offer the packages, it started compiling but soon got errors during 
configure. 

So before I start bothering you with all the errors I got in detail: What is 
the correct way to go on? Or are there precompiled packages available for my 
purpose somewhere else? Is there documentation for the PORT stuff so I can 
work out how to use it? And last, are these all questions for the mingw 
mailinglist or should I walk over to the msys list? 

-- 
Gruß...
      Tim.