Re: Using Perl's cc

[Gavin Smith]

On 3 July 2015 at 15:08, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
>> If it turns out the same Perl version is needed, MinGW, and other
>> distributions, would have to make sure that the same Perl was
>> installed somewhere, and that it was used when texi2any was run.
>
> That'd be a death blow to MinGW port of Texinfo.  Requesting the same
> Perl is an impossible requirement.  Packaging Perl is a large job that
> requires a lot of knowledge to select the useful set of extensions.
> Currently, the MinGW project doesn't even provide a build of Perl, so
> I presume anyone who has Perl uses some binary distribution built most
> probably with Microsoft compilers.

MinGW providing Perl would be the best option. There are other
projects that would want to use XS modules, like GraphicsMagick
mentioned in the other thread. Do you know if any of those work on
MinGW? Has a MinGW Perl ever been mooted?

If there was a MinGW Perl, texi2any should use it when run, instead of
any other Perl installed on the user's system.

Failing that it is probably possible to fall back to the existing Perl
modules. I don't much like the idea of having to maintain two modules
in parallel, one in C, one in Perl, which may have subtly different
behaviour, but it may be unavoidable.

>> Have you had any success in building and using the extension module
>> from the current trunk under Windows?
>
> I don't know.  Does the extension module compile by default?  If not,
> how do I enable it?

Yes it does. It should be compiled in the
tp/Texinfo/Convert/XSParagraph subdirectory by default.