Re: compiling emacs/nt from cvs using cygwin tools

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Le Wang" <l26wang@gmail.com>
> Date: 23 Jul 2006 15:09:29 -0700
> 
> >     * Supported development environments
> >
> >       To compile Emacs, you will need either Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 or
> >       later and nmake, or a Windows port of GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
> >       and W32 API support and a port of GNU Make.  You can use the Cygwin
> >       ports of GCC, but Emacs requires the MinGW headers and libraries to
> >       build (latest versions of the Cygwin toolkit, at least since v1.3.3,
> >       include the MinGW headers and libraries as an integral part).
> >
> > If you think this leaves the issue not entirely clear, please point
> > out where's the source of ambiguity, and I will try to improve the
> > wording.
> 
> Eli, is the Cygwin make a "port of GNU Make"?  A casual user might
> assume so, as I did.

Using a Cygwin port of Make is very different from building the Cygwin
port of Emacs.  These two are completely unrelated issues.  If the
Cygwin Make supported Windows-style d:/foo/bar file names correctly,
one could have used it to build the native Windows port of Emacs; as
things are, you can't, as the table in nt/INSTALL shows.

> Hence my statement about the docs not explicitly stating that.

State what? that the Cygwin Make cannot be used?  See the table
further down in the file, which has these entries for Cygwin Make:

    cygwin b20.1 make (3.75):            fails[1, 5]   fails[2, 5]
    cygwin compiled gmake 3.77:          fails[1, 5]   fails[2, 5]
    cygwin compiled make 3.78.1:         fails[5]      fails[2, 5]
    cygwin compiled make 3.79.1:         fails[3, 5]   fails[2?, 5]

> The rest of the nt/INSTALL you quoted above suggests
> building from Cygwin should "just work" without the 4 part dance you
> propose in another message.

Why would you want to consider ``the rest of nt/INSTALL'' and
disregard the portion that tells what you wanted it to say?

> So I suggest:
> 
> 1.  State explicitly that Cygwin make will not work.

The file already says that, see the entries in the table I cited
above.

> 2.  Give specific instructions (i.e. the 4 step dance) for building
> with Cygwin (bash, make, gcc, and all) already installed, and without
> MingW or any other libraries.

This information is already in the file.

> I believe this is the most common scenario for users trying to build
> Emacs.

??? The most common for whom?