[Aldor-l] Distributing Aldor

[pip88nl at gmail.com]

Bill,

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 09:44:49PM -0400, Bill Page wrote:
> Pippijn
> 
> I just downloaded the msi file again 12 Sept, 2:00 Z (although the link from
> 
> http://xinutec.org/~pippijn/en/projects_aldor_install.xhtml
> 
> was missing). I tried the install again on another machine running
> Windows XP/SP3. This time the user interface was noticably different.
> The end result was a Aldor/Aldor REPL link in start/All Programs that
> runs "C:\Program Files\Aldor\aldor-loop.bat". But when I click this
> link a command windows flashes open and immediately closes.

The link was missing with a reason. I should have deleted the msi, as
well, to be explicit.

> I cannot seem to reproduce even getting -gloop to work on this system
> with this most recent version.

Try the very most recent version, which is now available for download.
Note that this does not yet modify the PATH variable. I will add that to
the next package.

> But then I re-considered the issue. What Windows user is likely to
> install Aldor (a compiler) if they have not previously installed some
> C compiler?

Maybe not currently, but in the future, when more people try Aldor, there
may be many that simply download my installer, install it and play around
with it. I have had several people playing around with it when fixing the
library issue, which was the reason for the breakage of the previous
packages.

> > but if I ever wanted to use the mingw crosscompiler (I have
> > already successfully built aldor with that and ran it on wine for
> > testing),
> 
> I have not had particularly reliable results testing with wine. I
> would recommend running actual Windows in a VM.

I did test it with a VM, as well.

> > then they need to install the mingw native compiler.
> 
> Except for licensing issues, it would be possible to include mingw in
> the windows installer for Aldor and thereby make only a single
> installation necessary. This is what we did in some versions in the
> Windows installer for the some versions of Axiom.

Yes, that is impossible with the current licence conditions.

> > Should I change these semantics and allow the user to define the
> > compiler being used?
> 
> If it is possible to define the compiler at run time or even at
> installation time I think that would be great. Also provide a link to
> where users can download Visual Studio or mingw.

I will look into it. I could write some code for the installer that
searches for an existing compiler.

> Native windows in preferrable but for compatibility with some versions
> of Axiom, you might also want to consider a build of Aldor for cygwin.

I tried to set up a cross compilation environment for cygwin, but failed.
I will try again, later.

Regards,

Pippijn
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