Re: [Mingw-users] Is MinGW GCC 4.5.0 stable or not?

[Vincent T. <vt...@un...>]

On Mon, 3 May 2010, Earnie wrote:

>> The default download from MinGW sourceforge is the automated GUI
>> installer, which is recommended by MinGW document:
>> http://www.mingw.org/wiki/HOWTO_Install_the_MinGW_GCC_Compiler_Suite.
>> It also download 3.4.x.
>>
>
> This document was created when 3.4.x was the current recommended version
> and the version the old automated installer named as current.

There is a broken link "4.5.0" at the top of that page.
The "manual installation" still installs gcc 3.4.5.

>> However, the wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinGW, said the
>> stable release is "4.5.0".
>
> I don't know who even updates this page, certainly not Keith and likely
> not Cesar.  I know I don't, that said we've warned before that
> information about MinGW not contained at www.mingw.org is not to be
> taken seriously.

Wikipedia is used by a lot of people. Not consideringg it is like shooting 
in your foot. Not changing it and you'll have again and again the same 
messages in the mailing list.

You warn before about that, great. But maybe there are newcomers that 
don't know about that, and will first look at wikipedia before trying to 
search informations in that mingw web site, which is an abomination to 
search and find things. I gave up a long time ago to find informations 
there.

>> I'm confused, is 4.5.0 a stable release or testing/beta release? And
>> could you update the website/document to make it clear?
>
> The file download page is where you would need to concern yourself with
> what is delivered. If something is pre-release or beta it will say so.
> After looking at http://sourceforge.net/downloads/mingw/ I don't see
> anything in the GCC 4 folder to indicate that 4.5.0 is a beta release.

about that, in SF Files section, there are gcc 2.*, gcc 3.*, gcc 4.*. In 
gcc 4.* there are gcc 4.5.0-1, 4.5.0_20100311-2 a previous release gcc 
4.4.0, previous testing 4.3.0, previous testing 4.2.0-sjlj and previuos 
testing 4.2.1

It's nice to know mingw gcc history for our own culture, but, seriously, 
that's crazy to keep all those versions. The first time i tried to used 
mingw (several years ago), I was completey lost. And there were a lot less 
files. I can't imagine how the newcomers react when they see that mess.

>> Because there is no clearly release schedule of long waited mingw-get,
>> is that possible MinGW team patch the current automated installer to
>> be able work with MinGW GCC 4.5? I know the current automated
>> installer has many problems, not perfect, but at least it works
>> currently, and in many of cases it is much better than download the
>> package one by one manually. And patching the existing installer is
>> very little work than creating a new one.
>
> The existing installer doesn't fit our needs.  The mingw-get installer
> is just a few weeks from delivery.  The meta packaging for the installer
> will be delivered with each package instead of bundled into the GUI
> installer.  The existing installer has no idea about how to create
> dependencies of packaging so that you get everything you need.  With
> mingw-get the creator of the new GCC package will create the xml to
> upload with the package to tell mingw-get about itself.  That way, if a
> new dependency is created with the updated GCC then mingw-get will know
> about it and will download and install it for you.  Otherwise you would
> still be crying over your soup.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, is there a document that describes why the 
NSIS installer does not fit your (your == the mingw devs) needs and what 
mingw-get will solve when ready ? Also, what about the 'mingw ports' and 
mingw-get ? Will they be "deprecated" ?

thank you

Vincent Torri