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

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

[Adrien Nader]

Hi,

I've released version 1.3 RC1 of my Win-builds project, formerly known
as "yypkg mingw-builds".

Win-builds is a software distribution which targets Windows with both
native and cross toolchains from Linux and provides around 60 packages
of libraries and applications. It is supported by the yypkg package
manager both on Windows and Linux.

Why you shouldn't use this project:
- it works and is therefore going to be fairly boring
- it makes things too easy when dealing with Windows
- it has up-to-date components and is even going to feature security
  update
- but it's not going to be bleeding-edge, which makes it even more
  boring
- binary packages mean you don't get to pass -fomg-optimize and
  -funroll-loops to GCC
- there is too litle Javascript and CSS on its website
- you might find bugs in your own software and build guilt about not
  fixing them
- 1.3 is a bit cumbersome to setup on Linux (although it will work on every
  distribution) and that will only be fixed during January or February
- you might have built your own system or want to do so in the future
- it's not on github
- I still haven't finished pushing my new 10-minutes introduction to
  lablgtk and you resent me from not doing so

Website: http://win-builds.org/
Bug Tracker: http://win-builds.org/bugs
Documentation: http://win-builds.org/stable/
Downloads: the links are hidden inside the documentation

PS: the cross-compilation aspect is in my first reply to this message to
make things a bit clearer/cleaner.

-- 
Adrien Nader

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

[Adrien Nader]

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