Paul Kussmaul Jahnstr. 21 D-71126 Gaeufelden 2 Germany Email: Paul.Kussmaul@t-online.de 25.08.97 Hello Gnu-Win32-Team, I have tried to compile your gnuwin32-package without success. The make- files and configure-scripts are in terribly bad repair. They do not run under CYGWIN32/NT. I have already sent a problem report two weeks ago with- out getting any feedback (please excuse the non-standard-format, but I have read the send-pr documentation after I had finished that message). I think the cygwin32-idea is a good approach and I would like to use this package to do some SW-development on NT and also for an embedded i960 application. So, I'm motivated to help you out. A few words to my background: I am an electronics engineer at Hewlett-Packard, Germany. Currently I am working in our production engineering department for IC-Test-Systems, but I started as software engineer in our medical department. Some of my SW- tasks are listed below: * realtime data networking (written in Z80-assembler) * architecture for a realtime-multiprocessor-operatingsystem (based on pSOS) * some X11 applications (very boring) * some program generators (based on flex & yacc) * a flex-clone (Very interesting, but after a completion of 60% my son was born, so this project was never completed. Flex is a very smart program. It's almot impossible to beat that program.) * Genetic-Programming (this is the most interesting technology I ever have seen in computer science) Available hardware: * Pentium PC with WindowsNT Build 1381 SP3 with Linux 2.0.30 (S.U.S.E-distribution) * HP-Workstation 715/50 with HP-UX 10.2 I am relatively new to the gnu-community and I have read only a small portion of the gnu-documents. But I think I can adjust some of the makefiles. It seems the binary-targets need a $(binext) which should be set to .exe on MSDOS or Windows-systems. I do not see yet why it is a good idea that the linker automatically appends a '.exe'-suffix (this should mislead 'make', because the target beeing made is created under a different name!). Please let me know what I can contribute. Best regards, Paul Kussmaul Attachement: - problem-report, already sent to info@cygnus.com and noer@cygnus.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Paul Kussmaul Jahnstr. 21 D-71126 Gaeufelden 2 Germany Email: Paul.Kussmaul@t-online.de 25.08.97 Hello CYGNUS-Team, I have scanned the WWW looking for a Windows-NT-Port of the GNU develop- ment tools. I think CYGNUS has a lot of experience in this area and pro- bably you can offer what I am looking for. Let me tell what I need: 1. GNU development tools ported to Windows NT 4.0 (Build 1381, S-Pack 3) (host = WinNT, target = WinNT) 2. A GNU cross compiler for the i960 which is able to generate binaries for embedded systems (not bound to any specific operating system). (host = WinNT, target = i960) If I have correctlty read your WWW-pages, you offer both versions. However it's unclear what is included in your 'GNUpro Toolkit' and how much it costs? A WWW-page from says INTEL says that are offering a 'Developer Kit for the i960'. One of your WWW-pages says that you promote 'Open Standards & Sourcecode'. "This open model is so important to us that we provide GNUPro sourcecode free of charge. Users can customize sourcecode and redistribute software within their organizations at no cost". That's a bold statement and I hope you will demonstrate that you will keep this promise. Based on this statement I have checked which software you made already available for download. I have found 'gnuwin32 b18'. This package at least should should satisfy the first part of my need and probably also the second half. I want to do a 3-step approach: 1. Step: Check the binaries for NT 2. Step: Try to recreate these binaries from the sources 3. Step: Take these sources and configure the GNU-Tools for the i960 I have spent almost a week with this package. I would like to give you some feedback. Normally feedback means additional work - I know this from my daily business (I am a senior-sofware-engineer at HP) -, but I still hope that you will appreciate my inputs. I have done all test as 'Administrator' under Windows NT 4.0 Workstation (Build 1381, Service-Pack 3). 1st Step: The most important binaries are okay. I can compile and debug c-programs. I have not checked all binaries, but some of them do not operate as ex- pected. Here is a list of what I have found so far: CDK & USER-TOOLS (exe-packages from gnuwin32 b18): 1. bash PROBLEM: * Sometimes the horizontal scrollbar hides the last line. If both scrollbars are present, try to start a new process (e.g. vim), both scrollbars disappear, and after leaving 'vim' the scrollbars reappear (mostly), but the last line is covered. Resizing the window helps. (May be a NT-prob- lem). * Commandline-Editing works mostly, but sometimes strange 'tilde'-characters appear. The EDITOR-Environment-Variable has been set to 'vi', but 'bash' ignores this setting. 2. who PROBLEM: * who: /var/run/utmp: No such file or directory 3. whoami PROBLEM: * whoami: cannot find username for UID 500 4. kill PROBLEM: * Return status is 0, but it does not kill processes (neither with PID nor WIN32-PID, and -9 does help either). I did not find any documentation. 5. ps PROBLEM: * 'ps' does not see all gnuwin32-processes. Subprocesses from other 'bash'-windows are not included. Processes directly started by NT are also missing. 6. gdb PROBLEM: * CTRL-C does not work properly. Sometimes the windows are modified slightly, but the processes do not terminate. * Graphical User-Interface seems to be incomplete. Some menu- entries terminate the gdb-windows immediately. * Sometimes you get strange message-boxes which do not disappear (gdb seems to hang) 2nd Step: Performing this step I got a lot of trouble. The 'Makefiles' and 'configure'- scripts are in bad repair. They do NOT run under 'gnuwin32'. I do not believe that you have derived the binaries from this source! That's almost impossible. This is unfair, and strictly speaking that's a violation of the GPL. The source-packages do not contain everything that is needed to recreate the binaries. Now, after I have expressed some of my anger, let me tell you what went wrong: USER-TOOLS (source-packages from gnuwin32 b18): 1. PROBLEM: bash - 'yacc' not found The 'Makefile' does not run sucessfully, because the most-inner 'bash-Makefile' is looking for 'yacc' instead of 'byacc'. The 'make'-Flag 'BISON=byacc' should be propagated to all deeper 'Makefiles'. After installing from scratch there is only a 'byacc' available. 2. PROBLEM: 'make install' does not work The linker is smart enough to know that NT-binaries must have a '.exe'- suffix. But the 'install:' does not know this, it tries to install the basenames only. Some of the 'Makefiles' have a macro 'X=', but the 'configure'-script does not make the assignment to 'X=.exe'. Here is the list of tools which suffer on this deficiency: bash, fileutils, findutils, grep, gzip, m4, sed, shellutils, textutils, time, ncurses Some tools try to install binaries and scripts in a common loop. That does not work. This problem occurs in shellutils. Installing to a different target-directory by setting '--prefix' does not work always. It seems that 'configure' does not propagate correctly this setting to inner 'Makefiles'. This problem appears in 'fileutils/src'. 'install:' terminates, because some 'info'-files are missing. The 'makeinfo' does not work always. In some directories it does not produce any output. This problem appears in fileutils & time. 3. PROBLEM: autoheader & autoconf The 'Makefile' of 'less' make use of these features, but I did not found them in the sources. 4. PROBLEM: ncurses The 'Makefile' of 'ncurses' terminates, because it cannot compile the termcap data base. There are a lot of " use resolution failed on "-messages. This problem occurs, if you do a 'make install'. 5. PROBLEM: tar 'configure' cannot guess host type. I have tried to set it manually to '--host=i386-pc-cygwin32', but this does not help. I have got an internal compiler error: rtapelib.o: In function `rmt_rexec': /gnuwin32.src/user-tools/tar/src/rtapelib.c:228: undefined reference to `rexec' gcc: Internal compiler error: program ld got fatal signal 1 make: *** [tar] Error 1 make: *** [all] Error 1 6. PROBLEM: df 'df.exe' does not work, it shows the following message: "./src/df: cannot read table of mounted filesystems: No such file or directory" 7. PROBLEM: gawk 'Makefile' does not run. CDK (source-packages from gnuwin32 b18): 8. PROBLEM: bfd missing install-directories If the '/usr/include'-directory does not exist, the 'Makefile' fails. 9. PROBLEM: cdk top-level 'Makefile' The toplevel-Makefile fails, because @DLLTOOL@ is not substituted. The problem is located in 'tcl/win' and 'tk/win'. 10.PROBLEM: tcl 'tcl' is configured for CONFIGDIR=unix which produces include path- names like (./../generic/...) which do not exist. Configuring it to CONFIGDIR=win (like tk) helps, but later on 'gdb' fails. 'gdb' want to see some X11-headers (#include-statements in 'tk.h'). --------------------------------------------------------------------- | That's point where I got lost. I am not sure whether my guesses are | | correct or not. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3rd Step: I couldn't do it, because step 2 has failed. You see there have been a lot of difficulties. I am sure will see the same problems, if you try to reproduce them. Now I want to remember you to your promise. I urgently ask you to give me access to working sources. Please let my know in what time frame you plan fixes and the next release. Best regards, Paul Kussmaul (email: Paul.Kussmaul@t-online.de) PS: If you need a more detailed problem report, please let me know. If you like, I can do some beta-testing for you.