status of the debian/mingw32 port glib and an idea about debian APT/dpkg, call for help

James Michael DuPont writes:
 > Just yesterday evening, I got glib and gobject to link.
 > By merging the Makefile.mingw with the other makefiles,
 > it also understands the make install and standard commands...

But if you are on a Unix system (cross-compiling, or using Cygwin),
why use the makefile.mingw files at all, they are only intended for
people who have only mingw installed, and don't want to muck around
with auto* tools and/or configure scripts etc.

 > What do you think about my idea as to packaging: Debian APT.

I don't really understand. In some of your postings you point out that
people who download (L)GPL binaries built for Windows should also be
able to get the sources, and (at least in theory) be able to compile
themselves. I agree, of course, that is of the main points of
(L)GPL. I get the impressions that you would like to make this
(recompilation of said sources) as easy as possible. I think it can
never be made easy enough so that anybody can do it "just by hitting
make", but sure, any improvement is welcome.

But then you start talking specifically about cross-compilation from a
certain Linux distribution. Surely you realise that only a very minor
part of the users of GIMP, for instance, have the possibility to use
such a setup?

I would guess that of those users that even know what a compiler is
and have access to one, the vast majority have access to MSVC. (At
their place of work, obviously, few can afford it for home use.) Or
Borland. My guess is that gcc (mingw) users are a minority, and
cross-compilers from Unix a minority of those.

Of those who actually have attempted building this stuff themselves,
gcc users presumably are a majority. But that probably is exactly
because gcc users more commonly have the right experience and mindset
currently needed. If the build procedures and documentation for MSVC
users were in a better shape that might change.

Hans Breuer has done much work to keep the makefiles for MSVC working
for GLib and GTK+ HEAD, but we need people to look through them and
check if there are omissions or clarifications necessary. For GTK+ and
GIMP stable branches, the makefile.msc files have bit-rotted, and need
to be looked over.

--tml