Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Win-builds 1.3 RC1 - Package manager on/for Windows with cross-compilers

[Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org>]

As mentionned, this version includes an OCaml cross-compiler from Linux to
Windows. It is findlib-enabled and actually ocamlfind is the only way to
properly invoke it. It probably also features a number of new and still
unknown bugs (in case you were thinking you could build your project and
assert that it won't crash).

The good news is that I've been able to build without modification
ocaml-fileutils, type_conv and sexplib (from before they landed in the
tarballs of Core) and yypkg itself (which features a small C stub).
Their common point is the use of ocamlfind either through OASIS or
through ocamlbuild directly and without ad-hoc code added to the build
systems.

Cross-compilation should be available out-of-the-box in the OCaml
compiler fairly soon and, even though this builds on an SVN snapshot
from January 2013, win-builds will let you check the behaviour of your
build systems and provide feedback on how you would like things to be
done.

Some notes:
- binary names need to lose the '.exe' and get a prefix with the target:
    x86_64-w64-mingw32-ocamlopt.opt
- camlp4, ocamldoc, ocamldebug and labltk are not provided and it's not
  yet clear how they will integrate with cross-compilation
- the host needs an native OCaml of the exact same version (imagine if
  camlp4 wrote or read an AST for another version)
- I haven't tried building for both native and cross in the same pass
  using ocamlfind's -toolchain option (see "man findlib.conf") and this
  will be an issue for build systems which create an executable with
  findlib (this excludes ocamlbuild right now) and then use it
- more, discussion is open

-- 
Adrien Nader