[Mingw-users] MinGW for Windows CE port.

[Pedro A. <ped...@po...>]

Hi guys,

As some of you may know, I have been busy bringing up a toolchain for 
Windows CE (ARM),
based on GNU tools.  You will find this work at 
http://cegcc.sourceforge.net.  Actually, you
will find two toolchains there: One based on newlib (*not* a Cygwin 
port), called CeGCC,
and another one, based on MinGW, which we have been calling 
arm-wince-mingw32ce.

I would like to expose you guys to the approach taken, to ask for 
opinions, and very importantly,
to ask you guys what do you think of the mingw32ce name, since I want to 
start sending patches
upstream (gdb/gcc/binutils), and the target name is something one 
doesn't want to change
that often.

The approach taken was to reuse the winsup/w32api, and the winsup/mingw 
code base, and
extend it for the Windows CE runtime.  Windows CE uses coredll.dll 
instead of msvrt.dll, as
runtime lib, so arm-wince-mingw32ce defines __COREDLL__ instead of the 
i686-mingw32's
__MSVCRT__ or __CRTDLL__.  Then, __COREDLL__ is used on the 
mingw/include/*.h
headers to tailor the headers to our needs.  Also, and similarly to 
_WIN32_WINNT, we define a
_WIN32_WCE on w32api/include/windef.h.  On mingw/ we added coredll as a 
3rd runtime
(CRT_ID == 3), after crtdll, and msvcrt and added mingwex/wince, and 
mingwex/mathce subdirs.

The toolchain is in a pretty good state, and is quite usable.  The 
compiler is currently gcc-4.1
based.  I know that there are still some serious issues with the gcc4 
series for Windows targets,
but we needed the arm work done there.  I still don't think it is ready 
for a merge into winsup, if
that is wanted, as many things are still changing too much, with the 
exception of w32api/include.
Note, that we have been making sure that we have proper (MSDN) 
references to every change
we make.

Finally, the target name:
In my experience, most of the times, the 'case $host in mingw32*' stuff 
in configure.* is
correct for Windows CE too.  Also, mingw32ce is more inline with 
mingw32crt and
mingw32msvc targets.  I would like to hear your opinions on this, since 
MinGW, is after
all, your project, and your project's name.

What do you think of the full name? arm-wince-mingw32ce, should it be 
something else?
Is it ok by you to send ming32ce to config-patches?
Comments?

Cheers,
Pedro Alves