Why Cygwin should be supported.

[_florian_]

hi.

i think that cygwin should be supported because not everyone has
access to the expensive MSVC. almost every windows developer
owns a copy of MSVC. but if you want that artists can compile
(the latest?) blender on win32, cygwin should be included.

it isn't that mutch work as it may sound. i could compile
several progs with cygwin where no port were made for win32.
but blender not yet. wait some ??? ....
"...speak in weeks not months... " to quote a famous artist and coder!
./configure make make install works.....and...yes! mostly with help!


this is mostly important for cvs checkouts not for the final release.
(am i right that the msvc binaries are still faster than gcc's?)

what do you think?

florian

[gslyons]

Hear, Hear...

I'll cast my vote as both a novice coder, and a novice artist. While not very skilled, I've used and followed (read: lurker) blender for several years.

I think that MSVC absolutely _should_ be supported, but as open-source, GPL'd, 'free' software, there must be a non-proprietary method of compilation. It would be a cruel irony for an open-source project such as this to require MS-ware.

This is not to say that this fact has been ignored by the foundation (is that the proper term?), but from my perspective, there has much more focus towards MSVC on these forums.

To qualify my position, I normally run Linux, but my primary hdd recently failed, and until I scrounge together enough ca$h for a decent replacement(I'm a hard working single father) , I'm forced to boot to Win98 on my secondary. I understand that Cygwin requires a d/l, but I've managed to get most of the required packages installed with my weak 56K dial-up. (No, I have not gotten a succesful compile... ...yet.)

[jeotero]

Im getting closer and closer each day in getting rid of mircosoft

[rene]

mingw is the native gcc for windows. There is also msys. Msys is a Minimal SYStem, with which a configure script could be executed.

http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml

Mingw can be found here:

http://www.mingw.org/


There is also Dev-C++, an ide which uses mingw and cygwin.
http://www.bloodshed.net/

[seval]

Just installed Dev C++ and I am very happy with it. Fits in very nicely with wxWindows. Also check out wxPythion and Boa Constructor for your basic "python needs".

[MoreK]

Just wanted to add myself to a list of those individuals who think there should be cygwin support. Actually I think cygwin should be preferred over MSVC because of the reasons Gslyons stated.

BR; MoreK

[ton]

We compiled all Windows releases in the past using Cygwin.
I think that information is in the Makefiles already.

The current reorganisation of the makefiles and project files in Blender will keep this feature. Of course!

[_florian_]

but have you used gcc (mingw) or the mscv compiler?
i mean it should be possible to compile blender without MSVC.

florian

[H_xNaN]

As Ton already said, the Makefiles use cygwin's gmake on Windows (to call the visual command line compiler, through Frank's script in tools/). Tinderbox used this for our automated builds.

I think that a port to cygwin/gcc will be relatively easy.
Prepare for lots of #ifdef changes in the code

[rene]

I've begun work on getting the blender-ph autoconfed version compiling with MSYS, and mingw.

Still a lot to do. Getting all the libraries blender is dependent on is taking a while.

My in progress notes are here:
http://www.py3d.org/py3d_zwiki/BlenderSauce

If I'm lucky, by this afternoon I should have something finished