Subject: Re: Basic porting question
From: [email-masked] ("Sven N. Thommesen")

26 Jun 1997 11:55:30 -0700
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-Sender: [email-masked]
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32)
Original-To: Mumit Khan <[email-masked]>
Original-Cc: [email-masked]
Original-Sender: [email-masked]

At 11:13 PM 6/25/97 -0500, Mumit Khan wrote:

Thanks for your gracious answer! One clarification needed below ...

>"Sven N. Thommesen" <[email-masked]> writes:
>> Forgive a newbie's question -- but I've just been made aware of the
>> existence of gnu-win32, and I'd like to find out exactly what I can and
>> cannot do with it. So:
>> 
>> (1) given that I have an application currently running under Linux, can I:
>> (a) compile it under Linux with gnu-win32 libraries and produce a Win32
>> executable, or must I:
>> (b) move my source code to Win95 or WinNT, and compile it there ?
>
>Can do both. I typically never build anything on win32 box, but rather
>use a cross-compiler on a linux box. The only time I run into trouble
>is when a configure script is not properly configured (;-) for cross
>compilation; in that case, I run the configure on a '95 box (mine mounts
>my linux disk using Samba, so no copying needed), and then I run make
>on the linux box (I had to do it in the case of Octave, a Matlab "clone"). 
>
>gcc et al run an order of magnitude faster under linux than under '95
>on the same Ppro box.
>
>> 
>> (2) the application is written in Objective-C -- is this part of gcc
>> supported?
>
>ObjC is included in the binary distribution and builds fine from source, 
>but I don't know if it actually works sine I don't use it myself. 
>Hopefully someone else will follow up and provide more useful info.
>
>> 
>> (3) the application uses not only Tcl but also Tk and BLT. Will the need
>> for Tk and BLT present a problem for a porting project?
>> 
>
>Tcl/tk/blt etc does not build under gnu-win32. What is supplied are the
>stubs to load the Tcl and Tk DLLs built with Borland (also MSVC++?).
>

Well, to be dogged (and dense?) about it, assuming I'm cross-compiling
under Linux for a win32 target, which of the current linux libraries may
continue to be used, what parts are replaced by gnu-win32, and what parts
must be rebuilt under windows to make things work: btl, tk, tcl, libtclobjc
[glue between objective-c and tcl] and X ?

>I assume you're building extended tcl/tk/blt interpreters, right? If so,
>only the trivial ones will work in the current setup. For most part, if
>you allocate the memory and Tcl deallocates it (TCL_DYNAMIC), then the
>chances of your code crashing is quite high. Something to do with malloc
>et al incompatibility. There was some talk about a patch to BC++ 5.0x,
>but never heard more about it.
>
>If your code uses TCL_STATIC or TCL_VOLATILE *always*, chances are things
>will work just fine. You'll have to build the BLT stub yourself, but you
>can follow the way Cygnus has done it for tcl/tk. 
>
>For one of my projects, I have to build the GUI using native compiler
>(BC++ 5.01), and the rest using gnu-win32.
>
>> (4) is the linux dependence on X 'magically' transformed into Win32 GUI
>> calls, or are X libraries required?
>> 
>
>Nope. X code requires X libraries. Period. You can of course use the X
>libraries ported to gnu-win32. Works with b18 with Sergey's patches.
>See ftp://niteroi.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/win32/X11R6.3 for more info.
>
>> 
>> Sven Thommesen
>> Auburn University
>> 
>
>Regards,
>Mumit -- [email-masked]
>http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/

-Sven

-
For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to
"[email-masked]" with one line of text: "help".