I do use Windows regularly and am looking to improve chicken support for it.
-elf On 30 August 2021 19:55:03 GMT+03:00, felix.winkelm...@bevuta.com wrote: >> > * As far as I can tell, none of the CHICKEN developers use Windows >> > regularly. >> >> True. I have it running in a VM, but I always start it with a lot of >> trepidation and I don't fully understand the OS itself. For example, >> suddenly now "make check" has started to give a "permission denied - >> cannot delete read-lines.in" error where it's always worked before >> and I have no idea why it can't delete it. >> >> > * There are many combinations of Windows environments, leading to a >> > great variety of ways to break stuff. >> >> They all suck in their own way. I'm kind of thinking maybe we don't >> really need the cygwin build anymore now that there's WSL? >> >> > * We do not have automated tests on Windows. >> > >> > As a start, it would be nice to collect the information we need in a >> > wiki page (e.g., which variants of Windows we want to/can support, how >> > they differ etc.). At this point I'm lost at the combinations of >> > different Windows things that affect the build/execution of CHICKEN. >> > >> > I'd say we need help at that so that we can improve support on Windows. >> >> That's a catch-22 though: in order to get that help, we need CHICKEN >> in a useful-enough state that people can use it on Windows. And in >> general, out of the total set of users, only a small subset will >> actually contribute. > >I agree to all of this and I think we can't go on like this. We have to cut >down >support for all those Windows variants, even for Windows buffs this is a >nightmare to maintain (which we aren't). > >I see only two solutions: > >- Cut Windows support completely. Yeah, life is hard, but what"s the point if > the core developers don't use and don't know it? CHICKEN will always run > badly on Windows. > >- Support a single native variant of Windows, just the > bare minimum, provided there is some Mingw/Msys variant that works, and that > has at least a small chance of not becoming obsolete instantly. Drop Cygwin, > perhaps ensure WSL is a working option. > >What"s the state of all those Mingw variants? Are there resources where one >can find out about this? > > >felix > > >