Re: [Caml-list] GODI News: RocketBoost Beta

[Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

Am Sonntag, den 15.06.2008, 18:32 +0200 schrieb Adrien:
> Hi,
> 
> First, thanks for your work for the windows platform.
> 
> I've just tried this beta. Overall it worked quite well (it compiled
> during about one hour on a quite recent machine and installed 260MB of
> data) but failed in the end. Here are the last lines (I haven't logged
> everything but this could be enough) :
> 
> > + /home/Administrateur/godi-rocketboost-20080615/run/ocamlrun-3.09.3/byterun/ocamlfatrun /home/Administrateur/godi-rocketboost-20080615/godi-tools-boot/boot_console delete -f godi-tools
> > Warning: Package godi-tools is protected against deletion.
> > Deleting anyway.
> > + /home/Administrateur/godi-rocketboost-20080615/run/ocamlrun-3.09.3/byterun/ocamlfatrun /home/Administrateur/godi-rocketboost-20080615/go
> > di-tools-boot/boot_console add /ocaml/build/packages/All/godi-tools-2.0test31.tgz
> > + exec /ocaml/sbin/godi_console perform -tmpdir-state /tmp/godi4632-0:1
> > Fatal error: cannot find file perform
> > Failure!

That's quite strange. I have no idea what it is, but it is harmless.
Actually, this last command does not nothing, so GODI is installed.

Can you check whether the newly installed godi_console works? A good
test is

godi_console perform -build godi-tools

so it builds itself again using the new godi_console (and not the
bootstrap version).

> I have time to install godi from scratch so if you need anything,
> don't hesitate. :)

Thanks for your help.

> Btw, is there any chance the PATH gets automatically updated ?
> I've installed ocaml by hand several times but I keep on forgetting this step.

Well, you would need to do it in your login setup, e.g. .bashrc. The
bootstrap script just cannot do it.

What we can talk about is that stage2 is automatically called.

Gerd

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
>  ---
> 
> Adrien Nader
> 
> 
> 2008/6/15 Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > In the past weeks I've worked hard to finish the next GODI release,
> > focusing on portability. A beta version of the new bootstrap and
> > godi_console, called RocketBoost, is now available, and it would be
> > great if it were tested at large.
> >
> > There are not many new features in this release, so there is no reason
> > to switch to it if you already have GODI.
> >
> > The big news is that GODI now supports the MinGW port of OCaml for
> > Windows (besides the Cygwin port). This means that it is now possible to
> > create native Windows applications with GODI. Note, however, that the
> > porting effort is still in its beginning - GODI itself works, but most
> > packages aren't ported yet, and won't work.
> >
> > The MinGW support has become possible because large parts of the GODI
> > core have been rewritten. In particular, the C programs accompanying
> > godi_console are now coded in O'Caml (godi_make, godi_add, etc.), so
> > porting was possible by enhancing a few O'Caml libraries. This
> > refactoring of GODI also increases the portability in the Unix world -
> > effectively it should now run on all platforms where OCaml runs, where
> > gcc is available, and where POSIX-compliant shell utilities are
> > available.
> >
> > If you would like to test it, follow these instructions. For all ports,
> > you need the bootstrap tarball from:
> >
> > http://download.camlcity.org/download/godi-rocketboost-20080615.tar.gz
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Installation for Unix ---
> >
> > For Unix platforms (including MacOSX), just download
> > godi-rocketboost-20080615.tar.gz, unpack it, run ./bootstrap, and follow
> > the instructions.
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Installation for Windows ---
> >
> > For Windows you always need Cygwin, even for the MinGW port (it is
> > needed as scripting environment, please don't question that). Get it
> > from cygwin.com. Install everything that is needed (binutils, bzip2,
> > diffutils, file, findutils, gawk, gcc-core, gcc-mingw-core, grep, groff,
> > gzip, m4, make, man, mingw-runtime, patch, rxvt, sed, tar, w32api, wget
> > - hope this list is complete).
> >
> > IMPORTANT: When you install software you need for GODI, choose paths
> > that do not contain space characters. This is incompatible with the
> > shell scripts. So don't install into "My Files".
> >
> > Download godi-rocketboost-20080615.tar.gz, and unpack it:
> >
> > $ tar xzf godi-rocketboost-20080615.tar.gz
> > $ cd godi-rocketboost-20080615
> >
> > Now invoke bootstrap. You probably want to set the path where it is
> > going to be installed with -prefix. Furthermore, you can now select
> > whether you want the Cygwin or the MinGW port. For the latter, pass
> > "-w32port mingw" as extra argument.
> >
> > IMPORTANT: Remember that GODI itself relies on Cygwin scripting. If you
> > pass paths to GODI (including godi_console, godi_add, etc.) these are
> > Cygwin paths, even if you build the MinGW port.
> >
> > $ ./bootstrap -prefix /home/gerd/godi -w32port mingw
> >
> > This will build boot_console. Then you need an Internet connection, and
> > do:
> >
> > $ export PATH=/home/gerd/godi/bin:/home/gerd/godi/sbin:$PATH
> > $ ./bootstrap_stage2
> >
> > This will install the minimal GODI core.
> >
> > IMPORTANT: godi_console isn't ported to the Windows console window, and
> > for now only supports terminal windows that can deal with ANSI control
> > codes. Use Cygwin's rxvt as terminal (or any other capable terminal like
> > xterm). Furthermore, there is an issue with the MinGW port setting some
> > terminal features. As workaround, you have to set the TTY environment
> > variable to the Cygwin tty device, i.e. TTY=`tty`.
> >
> > Note that the MinGW port is only available for ocaml-3.10. Passing
> > "-section 3.09" to bootstrap won't work.
> >
> >
> > --- List of problems ---
> >
> > The final part of this message lists some problems that popped up during
> > the MinGW porting effort. I have often found workarounds, but maybe the
> > reader knows better solutions.
> >
> > * Cygwin interoperability
> >
> > A lot of the porting effort was about Cygwin interoperability.
> > godi_console (which is a native Win32 binary) can translate Cygwin paths
> > to native Windows paths (by reading the Cygwin mount table in the
> > registry). However, some problems turned out to be hard:
> >
> > Starting a Cygwin binary with CreateProcess from godi_console turned out
> > to be unreliable when godi_console was itself called from a Cygwin
> > program. So the calling chain Cygwin_pgm -> Win32_pgm -> Cygwin_pgm
> > did not always work (symptom: the called program immediately exits). A
> > workaround was to use cmd.exe as intermediate instance:
> > Cygwin_pgm -> Win32_pgm -> cmd.exe -> Cygwin_pgm
> >
> > Maybe related to that, it wasn't possible to run stty without explicit
> > device argument. (godi_console needs to call it to talk to the Cygwin
> > tty driver.) stty (and tty, too) always complained that stdin wasn't a
> > tty. The workaround is to ask the user to set the environment variable
> > TTY to the tty device.
> >
> > * Cygwin vs. Windows file names
> >
> > The approach is that GODI itself is seen as a Cygwin program - although
> > godi_console is a native program. As already mentioned, godi_console is
> > capable of translating Cygwin paths without using Cygwin.
> >
> > At some time, it is required to translate paths to the Windows style,
> > because programs like ocaml, ocamlfind, etc. are Windows executables
> > without Cygwin path translation capability. In GODI Makefiles, there is
> > now always the variable $(LOCALBASE_NATIVE), set to the Windows path
> > (using forward slashes). The porting effort was effectively quite low -
> > in a few places I had to use ${LOCALBASE_NATIVE} instead of
> > ${LOCALBASE}.
> >
> > * CR/LF
> >
> > In godi_console, it was required to look carefully over the code, and to
> > switch between ASCII and binary channel modes where needed. As native
> > Windows executable, godi_console uses CR/LF as EOL characters.
> >
> > It turned out that Cygwin's bash has sometimes problems with CR/LF.
> > Especially, something like
> >
> > stdlib=`ocamlc -where`
> >
> > does not work - the CR character remains as part of the result value.
> > The workaround was to use Cygwin's alternate shell, ash, in these cases,
> > which handles that better.
> >
> > * cygpcre DLL, and DLL lookup by PATH
> >
> > Cygwin includes a PCRE DLL. Of course, this DLL cannot be used in
> > non-Cygwin programs, so GODI always installs its own PCRE DLL.
> >
> > It turns out that the MinGW install of PCRE produces a DLL with the same
> > name as the Cygwin version (cygpcre-0.dll, as far as I remember). As
> > DLL's are looked up by PATH, and we _need_ the Cygwin directories in
> > PATH, the problem arises how to direct MinGW executables to use the
> > right DLL.
> >
> > For now the workaround is that the MinGW version has a different version
> > number (cygpcre-7.dll). It would be nice, however, to get rid of the
> > "cyg" prefix for a clearer separation of DLL spaces.
> >
> > * Ocaml does not install ocamldep.opt.exe
> >
> > in the MinGW port. Maybe an oversight?
> >
> > * No support for ocamlmklib
> >
> > A lot of work has been put into working around the missing ocamlmklib.
> > The difficulty is that stub libraries need to be compiled with different
> > flags when a DLL is to be produced, i.e. the C compiler is invoked
> > differently in this case. This is incompatible with many build Makefiles
> > that can only produce one version of .o files from a .c file. Because of
> > this difficulty, ocamlmklib isn't available.
> >
> > For ocamlnet, I worked around by using two scripts, stubcc, and
> > mkstublib, available from
> >
> > https://godirepo.camlcity.org/svn/godi-build/trunk/godi/godi-ocamlnet/files/
> >
> > Effectively, stubcc calls the C compiler twice, and produces a .d.o
> > intended for DLL inclusion, and a normal .o for the static library. I'm
> > wondering whether such a tool could be included in the ocaml
> > distribution, or whether ocamlc could have a special -for-stublib option
> > so that it invokes gcc twice for .c files.
> >
> > * Windows "execv" is broken with respect to "wait"
> >
> > When a windows process calls execv to invoke another binary, it is
> > signaled to the parent process that the program is finished. (The
> > correct POSIX behavior is to wait until the second binary is finished.)
> > In many places, it was easy to work around the problem by using the
> > spawn calls. At one place, this is not possible, and godi_console has to
> > use "execv" to avoid deadlocks. As consequence, it may happen that the
> > caller of godi_console thinks that the program is done although it is
> > still running.
> >
> > No workaround yet.
> >
> > * No real argv support in Windows
> >
> > There are no clear rules how to quote arguments in Windows (cmd.exe).
> > (Actually, there is no list of arguments (argv) in Windows, but only a
> > command line string.) In GODI, it sometimes happens that quoted
> > arguments need to be quoted (and more complicated), and this did not
> > work in Windows. The workaround is to write complex commands to
> > temporary files, and to run these by /bin/sh.
> >
> > * No signals in Windows
> >
> > There is no clear way how to signal a process to terminate itself. As a
> > consequence, aborting builds is broken in godi_console.
> >
> > * argv.(0) is broken
> >
> > I don't know who is to blame for this, either Windows, or Cygwin. At
> > least it wasn't possible to pass a name as argv.(0) that differed from
> > the executable name.
> >
> > The workaround was to use wrapper programs.
> >
> >
> >
> > Anyway, I hope you like the new port. And remember: be patient. Windows
> > is very slow when used for shell-style scripting.
> >
> > Gerd
> > --
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany
> > gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
> > Phone: +49-6151-153855                  Fax: +49-6151-997714
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
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> 
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany 
gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
Phone: +49-6151-153855                  Fax: +49-6151-997714
------------------------------------------------------------