[Qgis-developer] automatic creation of msys environment

Martin Dobias wonder.sk at gmail.com
Tue Jan 13 18:37:12 EST 2009


Hi all,

recently I was trying to recreate MSYS environment to build QGIS on
windows. Finally I've ended up with a python script that is supposed
to do _everything_ for you:
- download sources / binaries
- unpack, compile and install all the libraries

Like this, one should be able to create or recreate MSYS environment
with minimal effort, all the necessary build steps (and patching) is
in the script, hopefully in a sane way that will allow to use newer
versions of software. So, what can it do right now:
- install initial build environment: msys + mingw + flex + bison
- install basic libs from source: zlib + libpng + sqlite + expat + gsl
- install GIS libs from source: proj + geos + gdal
- install GRASS from source: xdr + grass + gdal-grass
- install python support for QGIS from source: sip + pyqt
- install necessary postgresql files from binaries

So, basically everything you need to build QGIS. There's always some
space for more libs for gdal and grass, that's just a matter of
documenting the build and putting few lines of python code together.

Hopefully this can be start of the end of painful creation of MSYS
environment for QGIS build and some people will be able to use it
(maybe also Marco?). Currently I'm just a bit worried about grass
support in gdal which compiles, but qgis crashes when I try to open a
grass raster. Maybe a build problem, maybe something wrong in
gdal1.6.0 or grass6.4.rc1 - I haven't investigated.

And here's the link:
http://mapserver.sk/~wonder/qgis/msys/
(it's just one file + small unzip utility script)

With improved support of MSVC compilers in QGIS and in other packages,
it's worth discussion what compilator is better suited for QGIS
windows package.Whether we're going to use MSYS/MinGW or MSVC...
Pros/cons for both approaches are welcome :-)


Martin


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