[Gdal-dev] Win32: Supported build environments

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

As I'm sure many have noticed in the past, I've been cool to actively
supporting MingW builds of GDAL.  Some people might remember that I was
the same way about Cygwin builds for three or four years, till I finally
accepted it should be a supported build environment.  I am always nervous
about adding new "supported" environments because they add additional
complexity and work.

However, there is clearly a significant interest in MingW builds.  So I'd
like to open a discussion about what win32 build environments we are willing
to expect maintainer time on supporting.  Environments not in this list can
still be supported by contributors, but we aren't going to commit significant
maintainer resources to them, and I won't feel personally bad if they rot. :-)

Currently supported:
  o Visual Studio 6 (via nmakefile)
  o Visual Studio 2003 (aka VC7.1) (via nmakefile)
  o Visual Studio 2005 (aka VC8) (via nmakefile)
  o Cygwin (via unix build mechanism)


Some potential candidates that come to mind:
  o Visual Studio Express Edition (the free download)
  o Visual Studio via project files (beyond the simple ones
    we have now that just run the nmakefiles)
  o MINGW (using the unix build scripts and makefiles)
  o Borland C
  o WATCOM C (or whatever the free version is called)

My currently thinking is that we should add MINGW, and VS Express
Edition support, and possibly drop Visual Studio 6 support.  After a bit
of discussion, my intent would be to make a motion declaring particular
compiler/build environments supported for win32, and thereafter we would
make a concerted effort to test them before releases, and fix issues that
come up.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org