Re: [PATCH] Re: patch for chicken on 64-bit windows (msys and mingw-w64)

[elf]

I do use Windows regularly and am looking to improve chicken support for it.

-elf

On 30 August 2021 19:55:03 GMT+03:00, felix.winkelmann@bevuta.com wrote:
>> > * As far as I can tell, none of the CHICKEN developers use Windows
>> >   regularly.
>> 
>> True.  I have it running in a VM, but I always start it with a lot of
>> trepidation and I don't fully understand the OS itself.  For example,
>> suddenly now "make check" has started to give a "permission denied -
>> cannot delete read-lines.in" error where it's always worked before
>> and I have no idea why it can't delete it.
>> 
>> > * There are many combinations of Windows environments, leading to a
>> >   great variety of ways to break stuff.
>> 
>> They all suck in their own way.  I'm kind of thinking maybe we don't
>> really need the cygwin build anymore now that there's WSL?
>> 
>> > * We do not have automated tests on Windows.
>> > 
>> > As a start, it would be nice to collect the information we need in a
>> > wiki page (e.g., which variants of Windows we want to/can support, how
>> > they differ etc.).  At this point I'm lost at the combinations of
>> > different Windows things that affect the build/execution of CHICKEN.
>> > 
>> > I'd say we need help at that so that we can improve support on Windows.
>> 
>> That's a catch-22 though: in order to get that help, we need CHICKEN
>> in a useful-enough state that people can use it on Windows.  And in
>> general, out of the total set of users, only a small subset will
>> actually contribute.
>
>I agree to all of this and I think we can't go on like this. We have to cut 
>down
>support for all those Windows variants, even for Windows buffs this is a
>nightmare to maintain (which we aren't).
>
>I see only two solutions:
>
>- Cut Windows support completely. Yeah, life is hard, but what"s the point if
>   the core developers don't use and don't know it? CHICKEN will always run
>   badly on Windows.
>
>- Support a single native variant of Windows, just the
>   bare minimum, provided there is some Mingw/Msys variant that works, and that
>   has at least a small chance of not becoming obsolete instantly. Drop Cygwin,
>   perhaps ensure WSL is a working option.
>
>What"s the state of all those Mingw variants? Are there resources where one
>can find out about this?
>
>
>felix
>
>
>