[Help-gsl] Work in Progress - GSL for Windows

[Chee, Clinton]

Dear GSL Development Team,

RE: Interest in Windows port of GSL

Thanks for your efforts in GSL - it is a very useful package.

I am writing to inform you of my Work In Progress in creating a Windows port.

My request and enquiry is when I finish the Windows port of GSL - would you be 
interested in incorporating my changes into the main GSL code base.

Just to wet your taste-buds, I have put some notes of my progress at:
http://xtechnotes.blogspot.com/2011/11/notes-gsl.html
see the section called "Building using Visual Studio C/C++"

please note this is WORK IN PROGRESS, we can collaborate once I have finished 
and am confident after all the testing.
At this stage I am just asking if you have future interest to assimilate my 
work.


Reason for Windows PORT:

1. More reasons to have Windows GSL because Windows proprietary Stats library 
are much more expensive. In the Linux world at least you can have open source 
functions from various sources - of course none as comprehensive as GSL.

2. Windows GSL already exist for 1.8, 1.12 - Yes I found these. BUT they are 
ported and made available as is. Their binaries may be available but they are 
separate from the GSL development effort. So when GSL upgrades, these versions 
are obsolete. More importantly these Windows port authors do not list how they 
port their code, so future windows users cannot learn from them if they wish to 
port future versions.


3. My port is using MSVC and maybe later Intel C/C++ for Windows. I tried 
Windows-Linux emulators/environments like MinGW and have run into problems. I 
have tried these for many days with lots of effort but I think MinGW is not 
robust enough to handle GSL for Windows. In the Windows world, MSVC and Intel 
C/C++ are quite common in scientific work and I am gearing towards these 
platform.


Conclusion

Basically non of the Windows GSL option scattered across the world works for 
me. And none of those people who ported to Windows seem to want to share their 
techniques and instructions for porting to Windows. So I am doing my own port 
of GSL using MSVC.

Once I finish it I am willing to share my work with the GSL Development team. I 
am willing to show you what CHANGES I need to make to GSL to make it work. Most 
importantly the CHANGES that I make is intended to be compatible with the 
current LINUX-GNU/GSL. GSL would NOT need two separate code base for Windows 
and Linux. My vision is if my changes are incorporated into the main GSL code, 
then any user can download the source and compile simply using Microsoft Visual 
Studio C/C++ and for Linux user, nothing would be changed.

Thanks for your consideration.

Clinton Chee (PhD, BE, BSc)







_______________________________________
Commonwealth Bank
Clinton Chee
Manager, Quantitative Analytics
Risk Management Centre
Lvl 14, Darling Park, 201 Sussex Street,
Sydney NSW 2000
M: 0402 058 983     P:  61 (0)2 9117 7544
F: 61 (0)2 9118 6509, 1300 711 441
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Our vision is to be Australia's finest financial services organisation through 
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