Re: [msysGit] Re: Using VC build git

From: Marius Storm-Olsen <marius@storm-olsen.com>
Date: Aug 12, 2009, 07:13 UTC
Message-ID: <4A826B89.20108@storm-olsen.com>
In-Reply-To: <1976ea660908101826q26faa37ao7920d5cf9d4f53fd@mail.gmail.com>

[Please do *not* do top-posting! Both git and msysgit mailing lists use bottom-posting]

Frank Li said the following on 11.08.2009 03:26:

> Thank you take care my patch.
> I can fix all problems.

Good! Many people want to see git build with MSVC, if only to use a compiler better at optimizing code on Windows. (And the debugger, of course)

> This patch is base on v1.6.4 release.  My working branch is vc_build
> at git://repo.or.cz/tgit.git.

Ok. Dscho wondered why it wasn't a proper fork of the main git.git 
repo, so it *should* really have been
     git://repo.or.cz/git/tgit.git
                      ^^^^ <-- Notice the fork relationship?

It would save some valuable space on the server, show relations, make it easier to find, etc.

> That is actually prototype to approve VC can build git.
> The code style is not big problem. I will fix it.

You will experience that for the git community coding style is very important (for good reason), so expect many rounds of rewriting your patches, until they all shine like diamonds.

> VC build will reuse many msysgit works because msysgit really do many
> work at windows porting.

Sure, but I think it rarely will involve your patches changing the code in MinGW at all. Try your outmost to keep your patches separated from anything else. If in doubt, please ask us on the msysgit mailing list, and we will guide you.

> I think the below is most important problem.
> 
> 1.  Where are vcbuild directory put, is it okay under contrib ?
> 2.  How to handle external library, such as zlib? Can use submodule?

For point 2: If we cannot compile we don't accept it, is the basic rule. This means that if you think the people building git with MSVC cannot install some dependencies themselves, you need to provide the full sources yourself, and make sure that the code compiles without changes. So, in this case if would mean to include the sources for zlib, and setup the vcproj to compile this code into the executable, instead of linking with a precompiled lib.

In this case, however, I think you should rely on the developer providing this library themselves, and not add it to the git project. The zlib project is ~750KB of code itself..

-- .marius