RE: [Caml-list] Effect of Windows LLP64 architecture on 64 bit MingW OCaml

["Soegtrop, Michael" <michael.soegtrop@intel.com>]

Dear David,

> FWIW, this might be pulling itself into my native Windows OPAM port - we're
> interested in Windows/Cygwin cross-compilers (i.e. ocamlopt being a Cygwin
> executable which outputs native Windows executables using mingw64/msvc
> and vice versa) and it makes sense to unify the build process at the same
> time as trying to do that.

I fully agree. But I think full native windows Ocaml compilers are also required. E.g. recent Coq requires an Ocaml compiler at run time and one doesn't want to require Cygwin for this. That's the reason why I started to think what it would take to get to a gcc like configure with separate build, host and target configure parameters. In the end one might want to have 3 different build variants:

-build=x86_64-pc-cygwin
-host= x86_64-pc-cygwin
-target=x86_64-pc-cygwin
As far as I can tell this variant works fine and also opam works in this configuration out of the box. Useful for people working on GPL projects or can afford a lawyer to figure out the licensing details or a want to buy a cygwin commercial license.

-build=x86_64-pc-cygwin
-host= x86_64-pc-cygwin
-target=x86_64-w64-mingw32
This is what you mentioned above and, assuming opam works, would be a good work for environment for everybody who is mostly working on Linux and just wants to supply Windows binaries of his application with minimal effort.

-build=x86_64-pc-cygwin
-host=x86_64-w64-mingw32
-target=x86_64-w64-mingw32
This works by using the supplied separate makefiles and is required for those who mainly work on Windows and for applications which need an Ocaml compiler at run time (like Coq 8.5).

Best regards,

Michael
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