Re: [Mingw-users] building Open Source

[Keith M. <kei...@us...>]

On 23/10/12 21:52, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:39:51 +0100
>> From: Keith Marshall <kei...@us...>
>>
>>     * download, build and install the mingwPORT of groff, (or build
>>       a more recent groff from FSF), using the MinGW/MSYS tools; (I've
>>       recently run into trouble building groff-1.21 this way, but
>>       everything from groff-1.18 through 1.20.1 should build OOTB).
>
> I can describe what I needed to do to build Groff 1.21, if that will
> help someone.  I kept notes.

Thanks.  I may take you up on that offer one day; right now, I simply 
can't spare the time to pursue it.

FTR, as a contributor to groff itself, I used to build routinely from 
CVS, but constraints on my time have forced me to curtail that activity 
since the days of 1.20.1.  Eventually, I hope that I may be able to 
resume it.

>> While it's good to know about alternatives, we should not neglect
>> the offerings from MinGW.org itself.
>
> Sorry, I simply didn't know (or forgot, who knows at my age?) that a
> MinGW man package existed.

No problem; I know the feeling.

>> Just out of curiosity, how does this ezwinport handle the dependencies
>> of a natively built man?  Obviously, the groff/nroff dependency can be
>> satisfied by an ezwinport of groff, but what about the Bourne Shell
>> scripted components of the man package, which MinGW.org addresses by
>> requiring MSYS?
>
> If you mean whatis and apropos,

Yes, (and makewhatis too, of course).

> then this functionality is not supported in my clone.

I expected as much.  They are supported by my 2006 port, provided they 
are run from a Bourne shell, (such as MSYS).  If running from cmd.exe, I 
also included support for them in their alternative invocation guises of 
'man -k' and 'man -f' respectively, provided man.exe itself can find a 
Bourne shell in $PATH.

-- 
Regards,
Keith.