[Mingw-msys] Re: The file name conversions and Emacs

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

Hi Lennart,

>> Does using the following in your Makefile help resolve the issue?
>>
>> WPREFIX=`cd $prefix && pwd -W`
>>
>> The use $WPREFIX where you need the windows absolute path?
>
> I have had my brain run on this for a while. Even though it could work I 
am
> not sure that the goal I am aiming at will be reached that way. I want 
to
> simplify the build scripts for Emacs. Currently it is a burden that the
> build scripts for MS Windows are not the same as for *nix.
>
> I can see that Keith Marshall had similar (but not equal) doubts for 
groff.
> I believe both Keith and I just want to make it more easy to maintain 
and
> use the MS Windows ports. MSYS/MinGW are of course keystones here and I 
in
> my case it would be a big step forward if you could do the change I
> suggested above.

I don't know what the issues with the emacs port are; (I live in the vim
camp -- sorry :-)

As far as groff is concerned, I participated in a protracted discussion,
with associated development effort, on the groff mailing list, about a 
year
ago, on the topic of porting to Win32.  As a result, groff now builds 
OOTB,
from the official GNU sources, in an MSYS/MinGW build environment, with
the proviso that '--prefix=`cd /usr/local && pwd -W`' must be specified to
configure, when the default installation path is required.

Even this restriction could be removed, by wrapping Earnie's suggested
solution into an autoconf macro, such as the example I posted yesterday,
so from the groff perspective, there really is no change required in MSYS,
to achieve an OOTB Win32 build from official GNU sources.

BTW, IIRC the groff list discussion was not restricted to MSYS/MinGW.
Another participant in the discussion, and development effort, was working
with MSVC and the MKS Toolkit -- I believe he was also successful in 
making
the GNU sources compile OOTB, in this environment.  IOW, the groff example
shows that it is not necessary to provide differing build scripts for *nix
and Win32 -- it is possible to achieve OOTB builds on either platform, 
with
only one set of build scripts :-)

Best regards,
Keith.