'make check' with Windows/MSVC build?

[Lubos Lunak]

On Wednesday 11 of April 2012, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> On 04/10/2012 07:06 PM, Michael Stahl wrote:
> > is this ooinstall thing supposed to work on Windows at all?  AFAIK it
> > symlinks stuff left and right, and running the result of that can hardly
> > work as native Win32 program?
>
> IIUC, it should only use symlinks if used in combination with (default)
> --enable-linkoo.

(On Linux)
$ make cmd cmd='ooinstall /tmp/loinst'
$ find /tmp/loinst -type l
/tmp/loinst/ure-link
/tmp/loinst/sdk/lib/libuno_cppuhelpergcc3.so
/tmp/loinst/sdk/lib/libuno_cppu.so
/tmp/loinst/sdk/lib/libuno_sal.so
/tmp/loinst/sdk/lib/libuno_purpenvhelpergcc3.so
/tmp/loinst/sdk/lib/libuno_salhelpergcc3.so
/tmp/loinst/ure/bin/regcomp
/tmp/loinst/ure/bin/uno

 That doesn't look like there's any serious blocker problem with symlinks. Are 
there any other reasons why it shouldn't work on Windows?

> However, I guess the mechanisms to create a LO installation against
> which to run the tests (which was always handled slightly differently on
> Windows, to avoid problems with long pathnames) has been broken with the
> various changes how to create that LO installation in general (ooinstall).

 So it can work, it's just "slightly" broken somewhere at the moment? If 
that's so, could somebody who understands this stuff have a look?

 I don't think it should be such a big problem to keep the Windows/MSVC build 
working, as soon as it builds once. The tinderboxes are now quite reliable 
and would catch any breakages in the later stages, like they catch build 
breakages now. I don't see it very differently from the MacOSX/PPC/gcc-4.0.1 
build for example.

 Not that it would make it work magically, of course (I remember I was amused 
to see some time back the 'oh, master actually build for me on Windows' 
thread on this list just the very next day after I had spent quite some time 
getting a number of MSVC issues fixed), but apparently it works for MSVC 
issues, so it could work for Windows issues as well.

> > the bigger problem is that this project doesn't seem to have any Windows
> > developers :)

 That would be more likely to change if those potential developers would not 
have to employ the horrible debug cycle Tor has described.

 And, BTW, I think linkoo could be modified for Windows, so that it does not 
create symlinks, but instead it copies a file if the one in solver/ is newer. 
That would still require 'make dev-install' after every change, but I expect 
it should be reasonably fast, quite convenient to use, and probably the best 
we can do.

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l.lunak at suse.cz