[aspell-devel] Re: [Aspell-user] Need Someone to Maintain Aspell Windows Port

[Elizabeth M Smith]

Kevin Atkinson wrote:
> The Windows port of GNU Aspell is extremely out of date.  Unfortunately
> I have no time and very little interest in maintaining a Windows Port.
> Thus I am interested in one or two people who are willing to step up and
> maintain it.  This will involve two parts.
> 
> 1) Maintain an updated binary of Windows compiled with MinGW, or a
> recent version of Visual C++, such that the binaries will work with
> Windows 98 or better.  In order for me to accept it as an official
> Windows Port I will need to sign off on all the required changes.  This
> basically means that a binary compiled with VC 6 will not work since it
> simply requires to many changes.  However never versions such as VC 7.1
> will work since from what I understand there are far better in terms of
> standards compliance than VC 6 and thus don't require nearly as many
> changes.  In fact I have several patches to this effect that I hope to
> apply at some point.
> 
> 2) Rather than creating binary packages for each of Aspell 86
> dictionaries, work with me to create a way to compile and install Aspell
> dictionaries from the source package.  The reason for this is two fold,
> one, the binary dictionaries will require constant effort to be kept up
> to date, and two, there are a significant deal larger than the source
> package.   Since Aspell dictionaries are in a standard format it should
> be possible to do this by examining the contents of the source package
> and in particular the "info" file.  This can be done with out requiring
> Perl or even any Unix tools.  The Aspell binary and preunzip-bin should
> be all it should take.
> 
> If you are interested please let me know.
> 
> 
> 
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I can help with the windows port and creating binaries, I'm already
doing windows builds of open source libraries for PHP and aspell is "on
the list" already.

Also VC6 doesn't require as many changes as you'd think - but there are
quite a few features that are in HEAD that are windows specific that
I've pulled back down into the branch for a windows build - such as
enabling relocatability for the binaries and using the windows api to
retrieve a user's home directory for personal dictionaries.

I have five compiler versions - VC6, 7, 7.1, 8 (2005) and 9 (2008) so
take your pick. And yes the 2005 and 2008 versions are superior in
standards support and binary speed and size but remember you'll have to
deal with runtime distribution issues if you use anything but MinGW or
VC6 - if you use MinGW you'll have to deal with the right flags so
people who use VC6 can build against the libs.

 I don't, however, have time to deal with the libraries issue - you'll
need another volunteer for that ;)

Thanks,
Elizabeth M Smith