Re: [RFC] Enable compilation by Makefile for the MSVC toolchain

[Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:

> Johannes Schindelin said the following on 18.08.2009 16:11:
> > On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:
> > > So, instead of rely on these vcproj files which *will* go stale, we
> > > can simply use the same Makefile system which everyone else is
> > > using. :) After all, we're just compiling with a different
> > > compiler. The end result will still rely on the *msysGit
> > > environment* to function, so we already require it. Thus, GNU Make
> > > is present, and we can use it.
> > 
> > We can also use sed or perl to generate/modify the .vcproj files, or
> > run CMake (once Pau got it to build), and package the stuff using zip
> > (once I got that to build).
> 
> Really? That would be some script being able to parse the Makefile, and create
> something reasonable as a vcproj script :) Keeping all the options in sync,
> conditional files/libs, all the various end executables (a separate .vcproj
> for each of them, and a solution file (.sln)to tie them all together into a ..
> "solution", a complete product blah blah blah) etc.

I think it wouldn't be impossible to split the Makefile into an 
easy-to-parse part and an irrelevant-to-vcproj part. Certainly you don't 
need GNU Make to read a file:

SCRIPT_SH += git-am.sh
SCRIPT_SH += git-bisect.sh

SCRIPT_PERL += git-add--interactive.perl

PROGRAM_NAMES += git-fast-import

BUILTINS_IN_OBJS += add

(etc)

That is, we can probably describe the project sufficiently with a lot of

VAR += value

lines, using only constant values and variables we specify, and then the 
Makefile declares them empty and does an

include UserServicableParts

and puts together the variables it needs. And things that aren't GNU Make 
could also process this file without enormous difficulty, since it's 
essentially a .ini file or java resource file with a stray + on each line. 
Of course, people interested in the vcproj thing would have to update 
whatever makes VC do the right thing when new *rules* are introduced, but 
that's a lot less common than new *files* being introduced, and also more 
obvious (in the sense that the included file is setting variables that the 
builder doesn't know what to do with).

	-Daniel
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