[Mingw-msys] Re: [Mingw-users] Paths question.

[Richard Frith-M. <ri...@br...>]

On Friday, March 8, 2002, at 06:31 PM, Earnie Boyd wrote:

> Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
>>
>> This is probably a FAQ (though I can't seem to find an answer
>> anywhere) ...
>>
>> What are the rules for path handling in mingw and msys?
>>
>
> Discussed in the literature in the msys\1.0\doc directory.

Thanks ... that helped somewhat ... though it would be good to know 
exactly
what circumstances path translation is performed in when running mingw 
tools
It seems that any argument in the format of an msys path is converted
to a windows path, but arguments like a '-I/usr/include' are not.

To be honest, I can't actually think of a good way to handle this 
problem.
It looks like configure scripts really need to be carefully hacked to 
make
sure that values substituted into makefile templates are things like
-Ic:/msys/1.0/include rather than -I/usr/include

It would be good if msys included a path translation utility to make that
easier (though I've just used sed in a shell script to do it).

>> Various tools seem to behave inconsistently, so that (for instance), my
>> configure
>> script uses the shell to locate the install program and sets a path of
>> /usr/bin/install
>> for it, but then the make program fails to find it, and various other
>> paths that
>> scripts set up are not found by other tools.
>>
>
> I've never had a problem with install.

What happens is this ... the standard macros in autoconf result in 
configure
scripts using msys tools to locate the install program as 
'/usr/bin/install'

The configure script sets the INSTALL variable in makefiles it generates 
to
'/usr/bin/install'

The mingw make program reads the makefile, and attempts to install 
software
using the value of INSTALL, but treats that as current-
drive:/usr/bin/install
when it actually represents c:/msys/1.0/bin/install ... it therefore 
can't
find the install program and bombs out.

The simplest solution is to force the path by setting the INSTALL 
environment
variable, something like ...
INSTALL=c:/msys/1.0/bin/install ./configure

>> Is there a consistent convention for paths that will work with all the
>> tools?
>>
>
> The biggest problem I've had is with symlinks.

Yes .. I've had problems there too ... the msys 'ln' command create 
windows
shortcuts, and fools the autoconf macros into thinking that 'ln -s' 
works.
However, when things like the compiler try to access files which have 
been
created by the makefiles using 'ln -s', they fail to follow the 
shortcuts :-(

Perhaps ln could read an environment variable to control whether it uses
shortcuts or not, and we could have a short porting guide telling people
about these issues.

> You most likely need to try `gmake MAKE=gmake' to see if it helps.  The
> MinGW-1.1 version of make is somewhat deficient however I have used it
> for a simple Makefile.  Make sure that Cygwin isn't in your path.

I really wanted to try to manage without cygwin.
Is it actually possible to compile gcc-3.1 under mingw/msys?

>   Also,
> be sure to install the MSYS snapshot.

OK.  I have been using 1.0.5 ... will upgrade.