Thanks to the helpful hint about btool, I was able to build inkscape on Win32 this morning.
Questions: 1) does anyone know if MinGW 4.0 build from here http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Win32Port can peacefully coexist with the official MinGW package? I mean is it safe to unzip that MinGW directory right on top of the MingGW 3.4.5 installed by the official package from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435
My main concern is that the 4.1 package is missing some things I'd like to have like g77 and gdb.
1b) [OT] Ok, what's up with MinGW releases? Why isn't gcc 4.1 available from mingw.org itself?
2) In the version I built, the Selection tool handles come out looking like trashed and/or misaligned memory. Is this a known issue? Both sets of handles (scale and rot/shear) are messed up. All other handles for the other tools seem to be ok. (To repro, hit 'p', draw a curve, hit space.)
3) I can't seem to load any images in my build (like .bmp, .png etc.). [Using the import menu item]
4) "Save window geometry" doesn't. Inkscape always opens up at the same too-small default size whether I have the preference set or not. (That's true for the current release as well as my SVN build). Where would I start looking to go about fixing that?
--bb