Re: Beta release of gawk 3.1.6 now available

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:11:57 +0200
> From: Manuel Collado <address@hidden>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> 
> I don't claim to be a GNU porting expert

You don't need to be an expert to send useful bug reports, that's why
I thanked you for reporting the problems you've encountered.

> perhaps there are better ways to build on MinGW.

The ``official'' way to build Gawk with MinGW is described in
README_d/README.pc in the Gawk distribution.

> >> --------------------------------
> >> #if defined(__MINGW32__)
> >> #undef HAVE_ALLOCA
> >> #define HAVE_TMPFILE 1
> >> #define restrict    /* nothing */
> >> #endif
> >> -------------------------------
> > 
> > ??? Can you explain why you need to undef HAVE_TMPFILE and define away
> > `restrict'?  You _are_ using GCC, right?  If so, GCC supports both of
> > these features.
> 
> A) #undef HAVE_ALLOCA
>     #define HAVE_TMPFILE 1

Sorry, I meant HAVE_ALLOCA.  GCC does have alloca, so I wonder why you
needed to #undef it.

As for HAVE_TMPFILE, I don't understand that either.  Can you explain
what's wrong with having it undefined?

> Compilation of the distributed sources produced some error messages for 
> conditional code sections controled by these switches.

Please show those messages, it's possible that there is some bug or
maybe another solution might be better.  Thanks in advance.

> The "current" distribution of MinGW provides gcc 3.4.4. It seems not to 
> support 'restrict' by default. The -c99 gcc flag lets it to recognize 
> the keyword, but then it complains about syntax errors on some source 
> files. I've not been able to diagnose these errors, so I simply disabled 
> the use of 'restrict'.

Again, please show the error and warning messages with the original
code, I'd like to look into this matter.  Thanks.

> BTW. I wonder why DJGPP and MinGW/Msys are not supported as gawk targets 
> the same way as Cygwin. All of them have enought tools to run 
> ./configure and make.

I don't understand: a target that can run ./configure does not need
any special support, since the configure script will figure out
everything.  Could you please explain what you meant here?

As for running ./configure by default, this is a problem with MinGW,
since there's no good port of a Unixy shell capable of running
./configure.  You used the MSYS port of Bash, but that requires a
separate MSYS installation, used only for building ports, and many
MinGW users don't have MSYS installed.  That's why we have pc/Makefile
that can build the MinGW port of Gawk right out of the box.

As for DJGPP, it does have a ported Bash, but pc/Makefile works for it
as well, for many years, so I don't see any need to invest effort to
fix what ain't broken.

Thanks again for your report and for working on the MinGW port.