Re: MSVC project file added to flex

[W. L. Estes]

On Monday, 24 June 2002,10:57 -0700, John Millaway wrote:

> > Building flex on MSVC does not require any code changes. You only require
> > proper project/workspace files 
> 
> If it doesn't require any code changes, then it seems overkill to distribute 
> an
> entire MSVC project along with flex. A more sensibile approach would be to
> include a "README.msvc" file that explains how to build flex under MSVC.

In general, supporting broken, proprietary development environments is
low on my prioriety list. I see the problem of building flex under
MSVC as a bug in MSVC--namely, that MSVC is unable to use Makefiles to
build programs. Since I don't have access to any machine which runs
MSVC, I will be unable to maintain any contributions intended for that
environment. When I got the flex distribution, I got, in addition to
Vern's wonderful work on flex, a whole bunch of files which were
poorly maintained--or unmaintained at all. Those files were intended
to help people build flex on variously broken or proprietary
platforms. All those unmaintained files did was take up space. Vern
spent his flex time maintaining flex and not maintaining various
descriptions of how to build flex on variously unhelpful platforms.
Since the type of README that millaway describes would take up little
space, I would be willing to include such a file in the flex
distribution. Interested persons can mail me directly or to this list
(help-flex@) with such material. I will evaluate it for inclusion.

--Will