[Mesa-dev] windows build experience

[Brian Paul]

On 03/04/2012 10:54 PM, john grant wrote:
> Hello,
> I wanted to use Mesa on Windows so that I could spend a little less
> time at the office. I do not have the hardware at home for the GL
> extensions I want to work with. After several package installations
> and adjustments to my system PATH to accommodate Mesa's build system,
> only to see build errors, I have come to the conclusion that it is
> very difficult to use Mesa on Windows. The number of dependencies
> required just to build Mesa seems to be the biggest hurdle.
>
> I've spent a few days porting the Scons build system to CMake. My idea
> is that the use of CMake can make building on Windows more natural by
> generating a build system (IDE project files) that I'm used to. I've
> used Scons before, but this is my first experience with CMake. CMake
> seems pretty easy to use, with the exception of working with Lex and
> Yacc, which I'm not experienced with either. CMake can generate source
> code as well, so it should be possible to remove the (undocumented)
> requirements for Flex and Bison.

I don't see how CMake would remove the need for Flex/Bison.


> In an ideal world, the generated IDE
> project and GNUmake files could be distributed so no one needs to
> install CMake either.

I don't think that's feasible since one of the jobs of CMake, SCons, 
and autoconf is to determine what libraries/dependencies are present 
on the build system and generate Makefiles tailored to them.


> Is the Mesa community interested in a CMake build system?

Probably not.  We've got autoconf and SCons already.


> It seems to
> be the most popular build system these days for cross platform, open
> source projects. I would be happy to contribute what I've done so far,
> but the use of Lex and YACC for the glsl support is incomplete. If I
> can't wrap this up soon, I think I'll just have to leave the CMake
> system for someone else to complete because life is too short.
>
> Is anyone interested in helping me make the build system on Windows
> (and other platforms) easier to use?

If we could simply improve the documentation in this area, that would 
probably be enough.

I've had my windows environment set up here for quite a while so I 
don't recall the specifics after installing python, scons, flex, 
bison.  But it's been working for a while.  I don't have the time 
right now to recreate things from scratch.

If you keep at it, and manage to get things working, please send your 
notes so that the docs can be improved.

-Brian