[LLVMdev] Fwd: RFC: "Building with MinGW on Windows" (DOC, NEW)

NAKAMURA Takumi
Sat, 16 Jun 2012 06:52:00 -0000

Mikael,

Thanks for working on.

My gross comments...

- Canonical URL of LLVM project is; http://llvm.org/ , not www.llvm.org.

- "test-suite and cygwin" could be split out. It would be special
thing.

- Memory/storage requirements would be moved to "A.B Debugging". Less
memory would be enough without debug build.

- Python (x64 binary) is available, too. I am using.
  Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Nov 27 2010, 17:19:03) [MSC v.1500 64 bit
(AMD64)] on win32

- Distinguish "test-suite" and "{llvm|clang} tests".
(Installing GnuWin32)

- Don't recommend to delete MSYS sh.exe in "Installing CMake". Use
MSYS Makefiles instead with msys.

- gnuwin32 is not needed on %PATH% if gnuwin32 is dedicated to tests.
Use LLVM_LIT_TOOLS_DIR instead then.
  (gnuwin32 is not needed when person is working on MSYS bash shell, FYI)

- cmake and python are needed on %PATH%, as long as they are not
invoked explicitly.
  cmake-generated Makefiles know where they are.
  eg. "make edit_cache", "make check"

- If the target of this would be for newbies, you may mention
"cmake-gui", too.
  FYI, I am usually use cmake-gui.exe, because I am n00b.

- (Building the Sources), In my experience, make.exe -jN tends to be
choked. I don't know where is -jN-stable gnu make on mingw. (Lemme
know if you knew better version of make!)

- Why don't you mention "make {check|clang-test|check-all}",
despite
of introducing gnuwin32?

- You forgot to mention a few important cmake variables.

  - CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release (for most purpose)
  - CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX (Who would be happy if clang were installed
onto C:\PROGRA~1\?)
  - LLVM_LIT_TOOLS_DIR, to use gnuwin32 dedicated to testing llvm and clang.
  - LLVM_EXTERNAL_CLANG_SOURCE_DIR, to check out clang outside from
llvm source tree
  - PYTHON_EXECUTABLE, if %PATH% does not contain python.

- Consider to introduce ninja?

Anyway, this could be integrated to "GettingStartedVS.html" ;)

...Takumi

ps. feel free to visit and ask me on the irc, oftc#llvm.