Re: Compiling lout 3.38 on Windows with mingw+msys

Remo Dentato wrote:
> [snip]
> I suspect that with this modifications it should also compile with
> cygwin but I don't have it installed to confirm.

This tweak is not needed on Cygwin. Lout compiles out-of-the-box 
on Cygwin, but some of the settings might need adjusting, e.g. 
"/home/jeff" for PREFIX and the installation target, which I 
prefer something along the "/usr/local" tree.

> [snip]
> The executable will honor the LOUTLIB environment variable, I'll put
> together a binary-only distribution for windows that has a suitable
> default (e.g. C:\lout) that can be overriden by users using that
> variable. There should be no dependency on mingw dll's but I need to
> check.

The extra code that Uwe and I did for our ports was to grab the 
executable path so that a default installation can run without 
needing to set LOUTLIB. The convenience of not needing to set an 
environment variable was big enough for me to add that bit of 
code. My rule of thumb is, don't add to the environment variable 
space unless really necessary. Besides, Win32 is not a POSIX 
platform in any sense, so I think, feel free to bend some rules. 
Many experienced Win32 users like self-contained apps, I think.

> The best option for Windows users would be an installer and a small
> gui to select the file to pass to lout and set some command line
> switch but this requires some time.

Your call. In the last few years, I have received some feedback 
with respect to the Win32 binaries on SF, but no one asked for an 
installer. I only remembered someone asking for binaries for a new 
version. But I don't know how things are for Vista or future 
versions of Windows. Microsoft seem to want the command prompt to 
disappear completely.

> [snip]
> Remo.D

Many thanks for keeping it going.

-- 
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia