compiler for KDE4/win32 binary packages

[Jarosław Staniek]

Ralf Habacker said the following, On 2007-04-12 17:11:

>>>>>> On win32 we support two compilers to compile kde4. Because they're
>>>>>> binary incompatible, it is not possible to mix mingw and msvc libs and
>>>>>> executables and we have to take care that the end-user does not get
>>>>>> into this situation. Also msvc is not supported by the open-source
>>>>>> version of Qt4.
>>>>>> So my question is - are there any objections against the plan to
>>>>>> release binaries for mingw only?
>>>>>> If not - can we somewhere write this down to avoid a discussion why not
>>>>>> to release msvc binaries in the future?
>>>>>>           
>>>>> I can see how it could matter for the reader of kdelibs.com - but why
>>>>> would it
>>>>> matter for those downloading the release? Is there something I don't see?
>>>>>         
>>>> The Problem for the user is that he downloads a program compiled for mingw
>>>> but only has installed msvc libs which does not work. -> The user is
>>>> confused.
>>>>       
>>> When you say msvc libs you're talking about kdelibs compiled with msvc, right?
>>> If we only support mingw shipments as you suggest, I don't see that danger. I 
>>> see no advantage for shipping msvc too - beside to developers. And these libs 
>>> we need to hide well under cryptic names :)
>>>     
>> I thought the goal is to have libs for both compilers kept even in one dir, 
>> thanks to prefixes/suffixes?
>>   
> We will see. While some basic libraries are multi-compiler packaged like
> strigi and win32libs, other package does not have such support. Recent
> Qt release for mingw and msvc are using the same dll prefixes/suffixes.
> I had submitted a relating patch to trolltech (mingw should have lib
> prefix) but it will need some time to be in the main stream. May be we
> have to fix more libraries.
> Currently I'm using a separate installation root for mingw and msvc to
> avoid interferences caused by loading wrong dll's. When the kde
> packaging once is stabilized, we can design how to have common runtime
> binaries. The most important thing today is to have a stable source base
> to be able to build packages with a livetime at least more then a few
> day :-)

Yes, true, this is a pain, these months. And in the meantime maybe TT will 
reflect to release msvc support for FOSS.

> A note about size of runtime binaries in the currently packaging mode.
> kde support binary runtime (without kdelibs) needs about 30 MB
> (win32libs,kdesupport,qt) and kdelibs binary runtime need about
> additional 30 MB so that we have a sum of 60 MB for each supported
> compiler. It may be that several dll's could be skipped in case of
> single application packages, but we will see.

It is still not very high cost for portable and efficient environment with 
clear API, e.g. compared to Java or MS.NET, don't you think?
kdesupport's size is a price windows user pay for having non-posix env...

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
  Sponsored by OpenOffice Polska (http://www.openoffice.com.pl/en) to work on
  Kexi & KOffice: http://www.kexi.pl/en, http://www.koffice.org
  KDE3 & KDE4 Libraries for MS Windows: http://kdelibs.com, http://www.kde.org