Re: gEDA-user: Building geda under Windows

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

Christoph,

> I'm just wondering what I would need to build gEDA on
> the Windows platform. I read something about cygwin
> and/or mingw, but I got almost no experience with recent
> Windows releases, as the last Windows release I used at
> a regular base was Windows NT4 WkSta.

Gschem has MinGW calls sprinkled throughout its code so that you can
compile it under Windoze.  Ales spun a Windoze binary back in 2002,
you can probably find it somewhere on the gEDA downloads site. It
hasn't been updated.

Also, patches which I -- and others -- have made to gschem & some
other programs have probably broken its ability to compile under
Windows.  Therefore, you are currently SOL.  If you were really
interested, you could look at the code & fix the things which are
broken.  I can guide you to the relevant sections (at least the ones I
know about), if you like.

Next, although gnetlist is a CLI program, it makes heavy use of guile,
so getting it runing on mainstream Windoze is a PITA.  However, Ales
has done it in the past, so fixing the breakage wrought by me and
others shouldn't be too difficult.

Gattrib was never written with Windows in mind, so moving it to the MS
platform will take longer.

Finally, as for PCB, it (currently) runs on X11, which is a unix-only
thing.  Therefore, your only hope for running it on a Windoze box is
to first install Cygwin.

> Because gEDA is a _really_ good job, I wanted to evangelize
> it to guys running Windows all day (regardless of all the
> dangers those people are exposed to ;). In order to evangelize
> it, a recent build would be cool of course.
> 
> Is the hassle w/ geda-symbols and Windows already fixed?
> 
> I'm really curious about how to do the Windows build process ...
> IMO it's time to conquer the Windows world!!!

Here's my opinion about that:  Windows users should come to
gEDA on Linux, rather than porting gEDA to Windows.  I view gEDA as a 
"killer app" which might convert some engineers to Linux.   Why make
it a Windows app when it runs best under Linux anyway?  The best
features of Linux/unix, like all the scripting languages, the
programmable shell, the ability to redirect STDIN and STDOUT, etc.,
complement gEDA's ASCII file format & inherent transparency.  Porting
gEDA to Windows just creates another clunky EDA application.  

In summary:  Engineers too lazy or ignorant to move off
Windows should continue to pay $$$$ for lousy commercial software --
it's their punishment for laziness and ignorance!     

Just my EUR 0.017,

Stuart