RE: MSVC project file added to flex

[Motiwala, Yusuf]

John/Will, 

You guys may be right, but can we consider following facts:

- Even though you consider MSVC as properietary environment, we all 
  will agree that it is one of the most used environment and 
  supporting (or may be not supporting it but one time help like 
  supplying project files) will benefit many developers
- Flex already includes configuration files for other compilers 
  like borland, then why not MSVC. 
- MSVC project file including sample application and readme hardly 
  occupies  ~10K of space. 
- This 10K will solve many repeatatively asked question in newgroups 
  about how to compile using MSVC.

Regards,
Yusuf



-----Original Message-----
From: W. L. Estes [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 12:29 AM
To: John Millaway
Cc: Motiwala, Yusuf; flex list
Subject: Re: MSVC project file added to flex


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