remarks about development wiki / LODE

[Jörg Kubitz]

Hi Folks,

i wanna share my experience with the wiki [1] and [2] to help improve it.
It was a very frustrating task get the complier running and i wish no 
one else would step in so many pitfalls as i did.
[1] suggests to not read any further but goto [2].
However going through [2] reveald i would have better read [1] first:

1. email: "Please do not make functional changes to this page, but send 
an email instead." Thats what i am doing now. Forgive me if this is not 
be the right mailinglist to send the email to. But it does not tell an 
email address :-( Also it is unclear a wiki should not be modified.

2. cygwin: "Now download and run the |install_cygwin.ps1| script as 
mentioned below.|". It would help if the document could be read from top 
to bottom instead of jumping around.
|
3. When saving the script with firefox its name is 
"bin_install_cygwin.ps1" (the prefix "bin_" is unwanted). Its not 
helpfull to know where to not store it. Instead the wiki should clearly 
tell where to store it (|C:\cyginstall\||install_cygwin.ps1)

|4. Supported Platforms: What about windows? This document is about 
installing in windows but it doesnt say which windows Version but lists 
MacOs Versions.

5. cloning lode: "Clone the lode git repo" and running will lead to  
"$'\r': command not found" (explained in  [1] only)

6. "./setup --prereq" will fail with "Error:Unsupported 
base_os:MINGW64_NT-10.0" if using VS2017 when "8.1 SDK" is not yet 
installed (explained in [1] only)

7. Using "Visual Studio 2017 ": configure wont find al.exe even though 
it is installed (in another sub directory then expected by 
/dev/core/configure script).

8. Using "Visual Studio 2015 " (as suggested by [1]) Its not explained 
one will need to manually select feature "Programming language Visual 
C++". The error is "cl.exe not foun".

9. www.nasm.us (referenced in "lode\bin\utils_Cygwin.sh" ) was down. 
Would help to have a mirror of all referenced files on a single server

10. After installing cygwin with |install_cygwin.ps1 |the packages flex, 
ant and zip are missing.  They are listed in the script and the script 
finished without error however i had to manually add them using 
"C:\cyginstall\packages\setup-x86_64.exe" Unclear which version i should 
choose (maybe cygwin did not know either?).

Finaly make is running now. I suggest to write a simpified "getting 
started" wiki for installing under windows without any unclear 
preconditions nor sidesteps. Just get it installed somehow with a single 
batch file. Or even supply a preconfigured VM image or Docker Container 
would be nice.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingOnWindows
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/lode

Jörg Kubitz

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