[sdcc-devel] Packaging for Msys2/MinGW

[<jo...@ai...>]

Dear SDCC Developers,

I'm happy to announce that I have successfully packaged SDCC v4.5.0 for 
Msys2's
MINGW-packages:

https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/pull/26732

This has proved extremely difficult. I began this work in 2024, and I 
have been
working on this periodically in the background since that time.

This follows on from an earlier thread discussing the effort:

https://sourceforge.net/p/sdcc/mailman/sdcc-devel/thread/46f5b428-3d05-4b62-8127-47cd38dbb4ad%40airwebreathe.org.uk/

As you will be able to see from the PR, here are the issues I had to 
solve:

   1. Problems with "#define B" in ucsim.

   2. Missing "#include <string.h>" include in src/SDCCattr.c

   3. Problems with the assembler Makefile rules affecting parallel 
builds.
      On Msys2, single threaded build is unbearable slow.

   4. Missing support/cpp/gcc/config/i386/xm-* files imported from GCC. 
In my
      patch I included xm-mingw32.h, but GCC has other xm-* files for 
various
      platforms.

   5. Problems with C23 support.

   6. Problem with the GCC pre-processor relating to the bin/sdcpp 
wrapper
      script. This relates to the following discussions:
        * https://sourceforge.net/p/sdcc/bugs/3589/

      GCC/libiberty has the ability to invoke the shell if it detects a 
shell
      script. Perhaps sdcc_popen() needs to support this as well.

   7. It shouldn't be necessary to specify "sdccconf_h_dir_separator". 
The
      configure script should take care of this automatically.

   8. Problem with UNIX vs. Windows paths for gpasm.

   9. Problems with rebuilding already built files during "make install"

  10. Installation of spurious executables: dlltool, dllwrap, windmc, 
windres.

Would someone be able to take a look at some of these issues?

To varying degrees, I think the patches might be ready to go upstream.

As for the other issues, I'm not sure what the best solutions would be.
However, I think it's reasonable to expect SDCC to build cleanly for
Msys2/MinGW with a simple "./configure && make && make install".

It seems to me that this is achievable with a little effort.

Best Regards
Joel Holdsworth