Re: FeatureRequest: Build improvements for Windows

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Jul 26, 2015, 11:27 UTC
Message-ID: <02471E10AEC7447DA1B50E7F44555786@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <BAY169-W75E45600196FA9E4B9A20CA78F0@phx.gbl>

(In-line posting preferred; top-posting deprecated ;-) (retain all cc's)

Show 8 quoted lines

> Hmm, it is already happening, isn't it? There is already a support of 
> MSVCR in git's code base. I am referring to replacing that current 
> support of 'older' MSVCR in favor of the latest one, so to make the 
> git's code base comparatively coherent and organized (as some/many 
> instances of #ifdef _MSC_VER and #if define (_MSC_VER) && _MSC_VER < 
> xxx etc. will be gone, for instance we don't need fallback for sprint 
> or snprintf since C99 std support for those is provisioned).
>

It's not clear if you (DP) are asking about using being able to use the Visual Studio IDE and gui to help visualise and develop the code, or to simply use the underlying MS compiler when making (using the Makefile) the Git code base.

One can compile the codebase using the MS compiler (given a suitable environment, and setting the right Makefile flags), but that may not be what you were thinking of.

The Windows team recently decided that the older Msysgit approach should be retired (can't find the link just now) and a new approach based on Msys2 started (http://git-for-windows.github.io/ and https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/wiki/FAQ). This is nearing completion.

Meanwhile I have been working on fixing the msvc-build script, which can produce a git.sln and associated files (targeted originally at VS2008), and is now at the 'Validate this with the Windows guys' stage (http://marc.info/?l=git&m=143750907804881&w=2 et.seq.).

My code, for the new G4W SDK, has been rebased from the msygit version, and is now at https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/pull/256

Does that help for creating an IDE compilable version?

Also, many thanks for yournote about the new VS Community edition (I'm still mainly working on an XP notebook for ease of carry).

As an open community of independently minded folks it can tae a time to gel around a reasonably common approach, especially as Git will always be primarily focussed on Linux (it **is** the Linux (Linus's) VCS!).

Show 29 quoted lines

>
>>> From: jacob.keller@gmail.com
>>> On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 11:23 PM, Dangling Pointer
>>> <danglingpointer@outlook.com> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> In my understanding, the ratio between the mere consumers of git on 
>>>> Windows vs. people who compile git for Windows is 100,000 : 1. If 
>>>> there is a breaking change in the workflow of the latter set, who 
>>>> use Visual Studio to build git from source, I assume that is doable 
>>>> given a good reason, hence this post.
>>>>
>>>> With VS 2015, C99 support is "finally" added with some C11 features 
>>>> as well. See this blog: 
>>>> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2015/06/19/c-11-14-17-features-in-vs-2015-rtm.aspx. 
>>>> One of the edition of new VS is Community edition, which is like 
>>>> professional edition but is free (also much superior than Express 
>>>> edition) and meant for open source projects. VS2015 also has the 
>>>> ability to target compiler for Wind-XP.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think the big issue is whether it has support for the various unix
>>> interfaces and unix shell commands we use. MinGW/MSYS comes with
>>> support for the unix interface, which I don't believe is that 
>>> actually
>>> supported via MSYS and I don't know if VS2015 is supported? I don't
>>> think it's due to the C99 but due to need of posix interface which 
>>> is
>>> not normally (fully) provided by Windows.

Git's code retains a C89 compatibility (IIUC).

>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Jake      --

-- Philip