[Mapserver-users] Compiling on Win32

[Sean Gillies]

On Mar 9, 2004, at 11:22 AM, PLAIRE Rory wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Many thanks to all who work on Mapserver... a great tool to bring GIS 
> closer
> to everyone!
>
> I am trying to compile Mapserver on Win32 so that I can create a C# 
> wrapper
> with SWIG. Two issues come up: 1) I can't find documentation on how to
> generate mapparser.h from mapparser.y, although I've used Flex to no 
> avail
> and 2) It isn't clear how to generate Mapserver as a DLL, although I 
> know
> that some editing of the build will be needed.
>
> I am lamentably green in the VC++ build process, so these questions 
> will
> take me some time to iron out. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to 
> point
> to the right direction to start me off.
>
> Appreciative,
> -rory
>
> Rory Plaire
> GIS Programmer/Analyst
> Benton County, Oregon
>

Rory,

Have you considered the possibility of using a well-supported mapscript
interface such as Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby with your .NET framework?  Here 
are
a few links I found which offer some degree of interoperability between
mapscript and .NET -- mapscript applications programmed in 
Perl/Python/Ruby
and compiled for the .NET runtime:

http://zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNet/
http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/Initiatives/NET/Research.html?_x=1
http://www.saltypickle.com/rubydotnet/

I'm not trying to discourage you from a SWIG C# interface ... but if you
are new to compiling MapServer, you are probably facing *many* hours 
pioneering
a C# interface.  There is no work committed to the MapServer code base 
to help
you and as far as I know there is no one out there who has anything to 
share.
Could be that there is a SWIG C# interface out there which is being held
out of the public domain (hello dgraham?), but I can't say.

cheers,
Sean

--
Sean Gillies
sgillies at frii dot com
http://users.frii.com/sgillies