As the previous email was sent only to one person, see below as well :-)

I forgot to mention one thing: MSYS2 has a clang that can be used to compile applications. Unfortunately, GCC 4.9.1 header locations aren't yet added to the build, so currently it's not possible to use it. Note that Clang on Windows only works on 32-bit (for now, will change in the future) and with the dw2 C++ exceptions implementation. It uses and links to libgcc and GCC's libstdc++, no libc++ on Windows yet.

Ruben

From: rubenvb.development@...3139... To: jbc.engelen@...2592... Subject: RE: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape Windows compile instructions and MinGW-w64/MSYS2 Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 15:22:13 +0200

Hi guys,

I'm not replying in-line because, well, the outlook.com web interface doesn't indent the previous message like gmail does. Now I have a reason to stick with gmail :-p

On-topic: I understand you like the devlibs setup, but as you say yourselves, setting it up and maintaining it is a pain. My message was just meant as an FYI, for your consideration. I won't prevent you from using the binary packages built by the MSYS2 project and integrating those into your devlibs. But I'd only think it fair you credit the project for their work (I'm actually not involved in its development in any way). I think just copying the libraries from the MSYS2 packages should work. Note that C++ is a bit more ABI sensitive than C, and those packages will need a matching GCC variant. (sjlj-dw2-seh and win32-posix internal GCC threads). C code will also be affected by the internal thread implementation GCC uses. Note this does not affect your code or the generated code whatsoever. Just what GCC (libgcc) uses internally.

Huh, I didn't find any 64-bit builds on the download page, if you want them to be picked up, you should place them alongside the 32-bit builds, otherwise people aren't even going to try them ;-) http://inkscape.org/en/download/windows/ or http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/0.48.5/

Cheers,

Ruben

Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 21:00:58 +0200 From: jbc.engelen@...2592... To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net; rubenvb.development@...3139... Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape Windows compile instructions and MinGW-w64/MSYS2

Hi Ruben,

On 31-7-2014 16:11, Liam White wrote:

The devlibs setup is actually the most simplified way to build Inkscape, because one does not need to download and install MSYS to build it on Windows this way.

I agree with Liam. Our current setup for Windows is about as simple as I can imagine (for both 32 and 64 bit). The most difficult thing is setting up Bazaar, which is unrelated to setting up the build environment. Once one can checkout Inkscape's source, the only build setup steps that are required are: bzr checkout devlibs, and downloading and unzipping mingw. There is very little room for improvement here; certainly MSYS2's installation instructions are more 'difficult'. I don't think setting up our build setup is preventing developers on Windows to join the project.

That said, there is a cost of our simplicity: someone has to maintain the devlibs. With the hard work of Partha and Liam, we have managed to get devlibs64 up; without them we probably still would not have had 64bit. 64-bit builds are possible because we modified our code to get it built with 64bit! We already have official 64bit builds :)

It'd be nice to have another project maintain a "devlibs", effectively what MSYS2 would provide for us, possibly at the cost of some *reduced* simplicity in setting up the build environment (based of of the installation instructions online for MSYS2). Perhaps it is as easy as just copying the binaries/headers into our devlibs though...

regards,

Johan

(Does MSYS2 provide clang binaries that are usable for compiling Inkscape?)

On Jul 31, 2014 4:00 AM, "Ruben Van Boxem" <rubenvb.development@...3139...> wrote:

Hi everyone,

I wanted to explore the possibility of a 64-bit Windows build of Inkscape (for obvious reasons of increased memory availability), and discovered the "effort" had already been done by the great people of MSYS2 and MinGW-w64.

I would strongly suggest the Windows developers look into switching to this development platform instead of the current, manually maintained "devlibs" setup. Perhaps this suggestion can be made more plausible if I attempt to explain what MSYS2 and MinGW-w64 provide.

MinGW-w64 is an active project that provides Win32 headers and libraries so that GCC can be used on Windows, both 32- and 64-bit. It has replaced "ye olde" MinGW.org on numerous Linux distros (most notably Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and Arch). It is also the toolchain distributed alongside the Qt SDK releases.

MSYS2 is an updated version of the old MSYS (it takes a newer version of Cygwin, applies the MSYS patches, and presto: a Unix shell environment for building Unix/cross-platform software on Windows). Additionally, MSYS2 provides a complete repository of binary packages, linux-distro style. What the developers did was port Arch Linux' package manager, pacman, and create a whole ecosystem around it of ready-made MinGW-w64 packages. The full list can be found here.

You'll notice that the list contains a mingw-w64-inkscape package. What this means is that there is an easy way of obtaining/building/... inkscape on Windows, without the need to jump through too many hoops.

I'm not saying you guys should drop everything and come hide in the shade of MSYS2, but instead evaluate the current build process on Windows, and perhaps provide a simplified way of developing Inkscape on this platform. A free bonus would be the possibility of providing a 64-bit Inkscape build, which is already possible without any 64-bit Windows patches thanks to good code by you guys ;-).

Also note that cross-compilation from Linux shouldn't be much harder either, all the aforementioned distros have an extensive list of MinGW-w64 libraries at their disposal, and using CMake should make it all "just work". The current wiki's instructions look abysmally complicated compared to the simplicity made possible by the MinGW-w64/MSYS2 combo.

I strongly hope you take this into consideration, as it will lead to a lower entry for developing Inkscape on windows, which in turn will lead to quicker bug-fixing (I hope ;-)).

Thanks and keep up the fine work!

Ruben (known as rubenvb in the MinGW-w64 mailing community)