[ft-devel] Freetype 2.4.10 MSVC++ / Cygwin Compile fails

[RMWChaos]

ENVIRONMENT:
MS Windows 7 x64
MSVC 2008 / SDK 7.0 -or- 2010 / SDK 7.1
Cygwin bash
GNU make 3.8.1


PREAMBLE:
Ultimately, this might turn out to be one build 'bug' and one build feature 'enhancement / change request', and perhaps I should submit this as two separate issues; however, they both relate to the same problem: I can't get Freetype2 to compile in Windows 7 x64 using Cygwin / GNU Make / MSVC 2008 or 2010. I'll wait to see what some initial responses are before deciding how to proceed.

I'm attempting to develop an automated build process for a Windows application that requires the Freetype2 lib. The automated build allows for the selection of x86 / x64, MSVC 2008 / 2010, static / shared libs, and other options. To accommodate these options and simplify the build process, I want to build all libs using the following steps, where all the chosen build options are stored in var FLAGS...

bash ./configure %FLAGS%
make
make install

For most packages, this is working well; however, I'm really struggling with Freetype2. As noted in the two problem descriptions below, these steps aren't working because the Freetype2 configure and makefiles appear to be using absolute paths rather than relative paths (if I can modify this one thing, I can get my preferred method above to work).

Alternatively, running 'make setup visualc' is defaulting to unix rather than win32/visualc, and thus fails when it can't find a 'visualc' target in the unix makefile. Am I doing something wrong here by running "make setup visualc" from the Freetype source directory, or has this something to do with having a Win x64 OS or using Cygwin bash?

I'm unable to use the MSVC/SDK command line "vcbuild" tool with the freetype.sln/vcproj files in this case due to the need to allow for the numerous possible build combinations. So the solution to either of the following problems below will likely resolve the issue for me. Preferably, I'd like to get a solution to problem #2 and change the Freetype2 configure and makefiles to use relative- rather than absolute paths during the build process. Perhaps someone can explain to me the choice to use absolute- over relative paths?


PROBLEM #1:
Running "make setup visualc", setup still detects as unix-based OS and CC compiler rather than Win32 and CL compiler - although, configure reports ' checking for cc...no' and 'checking for cl ... cl.exe' - and eventually fails with the message "make: *** No rule to make target `visualc'. Stop.". Is this because I've got a Win64 OS and am using Cygwin bash?

The unix build process doesn't have a visualc build process - duh, it's unix, not Windows - and the detect process is seeing my system as unix rather than win32 even when I pass the visualc option to make setup. So I'm stumped here. How do I force the make setup process to detect as win32 rather than unix? I suspect I need to follow the CUSTOMIZE instructions, but I would think that the setup detect process would see my system as windows rather than unix.


PROBLEM #2:
The configure process for Freetype2 is using absolute paths rather than relative paths. This is a problem as ./configure is run in Cygwin bash, where paths are in the format "/cygdrive/c/..." but GNU Make is run in a Win CMD shell, where paths are in the format "C:\...". Ultimately, when GNU make is called, after ./configure completes, it fails immediately because it sees the absolute path '/cygdrive/c/.../freetype/src/base/ftsystem.c' as a switch (the initial forward slash) rather than as a path, which would fail anyway under Windows CMD shell. If instead there was a relative path 'src/base/ftsystem.c', things should work properly. Even running GNU make under Cygwin, it still fails seeing the path as a switch because it's not wrapped in quotes.

Need an "easy" way to convert configure to utilize relative paths so that it assumes it's running in the source base directory 'freetype' and everything else is accessed via './src/base', etc. I've passed the CFG="--srcdir=." option to make setup as well as "--srcdir=." to ./configure, but that didn't appear to work. I've also manually changed 'abs_curr_dir' var in configure to '.' and './' but neither of those worked either.

Thanks and regards,

-RMWChaos