[M3devel] my status on win32

Randy Coleburn rcoleburn at scires.com
Wed Jan 16 17:24:34 CET 2008


Jay:
 
Not sure I've clued in to all of your dialog.  Sorry.
 
I have in the past used a free tool to build an installer package and I
was thinking of using it again.  Since the tool is free, we could put
all the work I do into the CVS repository so that others could also
maintain it.
 
What I am looking to achieve is to have a way where a "normal" Windows
user could download a program, run it, and have all of the cm3 packages
installed without having to use the MIN distribution to build it up or
any other tools to get the sources (like cvs).  You could achieve the
same thing by having a big ZIP file also I suppose, but having the
installer would also let us easily put something in the start menu to
launch a command line with all the environment variables set properly
via automatic call to vcvars et al.  When I get "Reactor" working, it
too could be put into the start menu.  That just makes it fit in better
with the Windows user culture I think.
 
The reason I wanted to rebuild everything is two-fold:  
1) ensure it can be done (i.e., test for "Broken #1"), and 
2) get all of the rest of the packages built so I could then use cm3 to
build "reactor" and my own programs and test them to see if there are
any "Broken #2" issues.  The MIN distribution is really insufficient to
do much of anything except to build the rest of the packages you need. 
My understanding is that I needed to use CVS to get the current sources,
because if I went back to the source archive, it was old and known to be
Broken #1 on Windows.
 
I'm glad that you believe the current "Broken #1" situation is easy to
fix.  Let me know what to do and I'll give it another try.
 
My experience in the past has been that there are 3 conditions to
getting cm3 to work properly on windows after it has been installed:
1) make sure your environment variables are set up by vcvars to point
to the compiler/linker/libraries (of course if you used a non-Microsoft
C compiler/linker you would need to use something other than vcvars);
2) make sure cm3.cfg has the right paths in place to find all the
libraries and tools using DOS style short names (no embedded spaces);
and
3) make sure C:\cm3\bin is in your path.
Of these, #2 & #3 are essentially one-time events, and #1 can be set up
by a invoking a batch/command file via a shortcut, so no big deal for
me.  You could even make #1 a one-time event by modifying the
system-level (vice user-level) environment variables.  The old
cm3install program seemed to do a decent job of #2 for me.
 
Also, I've noted some of your past dialog about accepting either '/' or
'\' as a path separator.  I'm sure you are aware that on Windows '/' is
used often for switches (arguments).  Plus Windows also allows spaces to
be embedded in the command line, so whatever solution you propose needs
to take into account that a valid command line might look like this:
C:\My Program Folder\My Program.exe /myArg1 /myArg2
In some situations, this command line would have to be quoted and
rendered as:
"C:\My Program Folder\My Program.exe" /myArg1 /myArg2
and in places where the backslash is an escape character, I've seen
"C:\\My Program Folder\\My Program.exe" /myArg1 /myArg2
 
Alas, I seem to have rambled a bit also.  Sorry.  
The immediate need for me now is to solve the Broken #1 condition, so
please let me know how to fix it and proceed.
 
Regards,
Randy

>>> Jay <jayk123 at hotmail.com> 1/16/2008 10:28 AM >>>
Randy, yes and no and clarifications.
 
I mention starting with 5.1.6 as a "worst" or "worse" case.
The earlier you start, the harder things are -- for me, to ensure it
will work.
 
If you merely start with my 5.5.0, well, what are you rebuilding from
source for?
Heck, you can use any binary distribution, 4.1, 5.1.6, and just use it.
They should work.
 
The n steps you/I give are really actually geared for people who WANT
to build from source, it is not what people HAVE to do.
As well there have been can be source distributions, to cut out CVS.
 
I'll look into the datefn stuff shortly.
 
As to the installer, well, again, yes and no.
The need for the installer is very small. All you have to do today is
unzip the .zip somewhere and set the path, and possibly the vcvars
thing. That's it. I should..now that you are "pressuring" me for ease of
use, teach cm3 about the various %devenvdir%, %vcinstalldir% variables,
etc. That way as long as the user installed the tools, even if they
elected not to change path/lib/include, cm3 can find the compiler and
linker. I know everyone wants to preserve the flexibility of
quake/cm3.cfg but...besides, cm3 can be pretty darn smart here. IF
cm3.cfg defines SYSTEM_CC, leave things along (NT386 cm3.cfg does not
today do that). However if there is now SYSTEM_CC and there is no
cl.exe/link.exe in %PATH%, it could go on a quick hunt for them. On the
lib and include part, well, the dependency on %include% might only be
for errno..maybe not worth it. It has been whatever it is forever, like
int* _errno(void); #define errno (*_errno)()). Modula-3 engages in
rampant header cloning and CErrnoC was only introduced where that was
deemed more fragile than usual, and for Windows it probably wasn't
actually fragile -- the fragility, if I may be so rudely judgemental, is
because so many other systems are so Johnny-come-lately to arriving at
the obviously correct threading model that Windows has had all along
(since Win95/NT, can't say anything good about Win3.1; I think OS/2
might have had it correct all along too.). Funny, everyone has FINALLY
arrived at the correct threading model, only to have start changing
again, since the number of cores and machines is set to be much greater
than anticipated, the obvious threading model has been deemed too
difficult for anyone to use (Win32, Modula-3, Java, .NET, Python, all
the same supposedly too difficult model btw), and so some new one is
needed, and well, truthfully, the difficulty is not just for dummies on
relatively small multiproc boxes not having simple race conditions, the
problem is scaling way way up.
 
Sorry that was my usual tangential.
 
Even the unzip and set path would benefit slightly from a GUI
installer.
I believe there is some easy thing you can do where you write your GUI
installer and you put it in the .zip and then you prepend the GUI self
extracting .zip/.exe stub, and you can tell it to run a particular
command after the extraction.
 
I guess you might use a fancier thing though?
That is, are you going to, say, write a gui installer from scratch in
Modula-3? It might be a fun exercise. :)
And then you could build the self extracting prefix from source etc.
This is the hard way I guess, but more interesing.
If you can build an msi or use InstallShield or Wix or something, go
ahead.
If you use widely availabe free as in beer tools, that can be rolled
into whatever automation there is to produce distributions, keeping it
up to date shouldn't be a problem.
 
I do have to bring up some annoying questions:
 
1) Does anyone besides me have the capacity to produce distributions?
i.e.: Any Win32 machines left at Elego?
 
2) I know I ramble. So one of my many tangents/questions went
unanswered.
Say, in the absence of a gui installer, should .zips/.tar.bz files look
like
 
cm3-min-<version>/bin/cm3
or
bin/cm3
or
cm3/bin/cm3
 
The last one is more directly usable. The first one is very common.
 
This reminds me though Randy, the distribution I made available was
"min", so yeah, like if you are doing any gui programming, using any
"standard" library besides m3core or libm3, you'd need to build more
from source.
 
I can readily provide you a "std" distribution though.
It's "always" been a "problem" to make my files available -- no web
site hosting for me -- but recently that wasn't a problem, someone
picked the files out of ~jkrell on birch and put them on the web site.
Good.
 
One more thing -- Olaf, please confirm repeat yourself, 'cause I admit
I wasn't sure it was the right thing, but if you insist, ok. "std"
should be "all"? I should not continue to imagine there is a new larger
group called "all"? And wherever things are missing from std but do
build ok, add them?
m3cc should be in std?
(I admit some big indecisiveness around m3cc. It is far and away the
longest thing to build and so the one you really want to skip the most
and leave out of whatever package group. I also wonder if on Windows,
there should be some check where if sh is not in the $PATH, just
silently skip m3cc? You only need MingWin to build what I have on my
system for NT386GNU, except you also need msys just for m3cc. msys is
actually quite small, like only 20 files..)
 
Oh, sorry, yet another question.
The non-gcc backend is excluded from the build on systems that use the
gcc backend.
For minimization, that is appropriate.
For maximizing cross build capability, it is wrong.
The packages build fine. I suspect they work.
I am not a user of cross build capability yet, so I don't really care.
(What I do for NT386/NT386GNU /might/ be considered sort of a cross
build, but it is different/easier).
They are small packages.
 
 - Jay

Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:25:49 -0500
From: rcoleburn at scires.com 
To: m3devel at elegosoft.com; jayk123 at hotmail.com 
Subject: Re: [M3devel] my status on win32

Jay:
 
There is no line in the m3makefile dealing with datefn, so I added the
whole statement just before the line 
include("version.quake")
 
Now, I get an error saying that the variable datefn is not defined.
 
If you change to put quotes around datefn in the include statement, you
get an error saying it can't open the file.
 
You made a reference in one of your earlier posts about trying 5.1.6 or
4.1, but note that I started with your cm3-min-WIN32-NT386-d5.5.0.zip ,
not the 5.1.6 or 4.1 versions.  Thus, using d5.5.0 as a base, I am
trying to run your "upgrade.cmd" to rebuild the sources I checked out
from CVS.  Since this doesn't work "out-of-the-box", again I say this
fits into the "Broken #1" category.
 
If I can get this to work, I don't mind putting together a Windows
installer program that will install the whole thing.  That way, folks
won't have to install cygwin just to get CVS so that they can install a
working cm3.  Folks will need to install the free Microsoft Visual C as
a prerequisite, but then that's not too bad.  Having an installer
program would make cm3 more friendly to Windows folks.  The current
16-step method is too laborious and error-prone for the person just
getting started and they will not give cm3 a second try.  
 
As the cm3 system evolves and new releases are made, we will need to
keep the installer program up-to-date and I don't mind doing that. 
After someone gets familiar with cm3 they might want to delve into some
of the scripts for rebuilding the system, but until then, I think the
installer program is the way to go.
 
Regards,
Randy

>>> Jay <jayk123 at hotmail.com> 1/16/2008 1:01 AM >>>
I think I see the problem.
 
in cm3\src\m3makefile, make this change
 > if not defined("NOW")
     include(datefn)
 > end
 
datefn is only created if certain other variables aren't defined, and
do-pkg defines them.
I don't know why I don't see this. Later.

Could be that the Python scripts have a typo and don't define them.
I've been using them more than cmd.
 
If the host is NT, "NOW" is either gotten from an updated cm3.exe, or
left to "not available".
  So the initial cm3 built from older cm3 can't report when it was
built, but cm3 built from current cm3 can.
 
I need to change that:
  1) to be a function for niceness
  2) to make it that way for Posix, for any host
 
but I haven't been using Posix as much lately so not testing it.
 
 - Jay


Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:55:39 -0500
From: rcoleburn at scires.com 
To: m3devel at elegosoft.com; jayk123 at hotmail.com 
Subject: RE: my status on win32

Jay:
 
In the file version.quake, I made the following edit:
 
changed line:  local datefn = "../" & TARGET & ".datenow"
to:  local datefn = ".." & SL & TARGET & ".datenow"
 
This change has the effect of putting a backward slash in the pathname
instead of a forward slash, so we get
C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\..\NT386.datenow
 
So from that perspective, the change seems good.
 
Unfortunately, I still get the error that this file can't be opened.
 
A quick check of C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\NT386 shows that the
file .datenow does not exist.
 
Regards,
Randy

>>> Jay <jayk123 at hotmail.com> 1/15/2008 11:03 PM >>>
That's not too bad really.
 
 1) I'd recommend putting cm3 at the start of the path instead of the
end. 
 2) Just comment out the offending code to make progress. It's not
critical. 

 >> C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\../NT386.datenow
 
The code is:
 C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\version.quake or such, included
by cm3\src\m3makefile.
 
Does the file exist?
Does version.quake use "/" or "SL"? If it uses "/", try replacing with
SL (and ampersand for string concat).
 
Could be that a newer binary distributions works better with forward
slashes.
 
  > 4. 
  > 5. 
  > 6.  Launch cygwin from desktop icon.  
 
Cygwin is only needed for cvs, I think you realize.
 
Could you send me offline the result of just running "set" after
running vcvarsall?
I'd like to adapt pylib.py to it maybe.
 
(I can start from 5.1.6 and will try 4.1 at some point.)
 
 - Jay

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:52:59 -0500
From: rcoleburn at scires.com 
To: m3devel at elegosoft.com; jayk123 at hotmail.com 
Subject: my status on win32

Jay et al:
 
I've listed below the steps I've undertaken to try and build the
current sources on Windows XP.  
 
I've also attached a text file showing the output I got when trying to
build everything using Jay's upgrade.cmd script.
 
Unfortunately, I'm getting a build error (see below).
 
Please advise on how to resolve.
 
STEPS I TOOK:
=========
1.  Download Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition All-in-One
.ISO file and burn to DVD.
    http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/ 
 
2.  Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition from DVD.
 
3.  Use "Microsoft Update" service to check for updates / service
packs.
 
4.  Download cygwin setup program from 
    http://cygwin.com/ 
 
5.  Ran cygwin setup.exe program to install cygwin for all users.  
    Under "Devel" category, make certain to select "cvs" for
installation.
 
6.  Launch cygwin from desktop icon.
 
7.  In cygwin command shell window, execute following two commands,
making sure to give email as password when prompted for login:
    cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at modula3.elegosoft.com:/usr/cvs login
    cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at modula3.elegosoft.com:/usr/cvs checkout
cm3
 
8.  Moved resulting C:\cygwin\home\rcoleburn\cm3 to
C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree
    Note that you should replace "rcoleburn" above with your Windows
login username.
 
9.  Download cm3-min-WIN32-NT386-d5.5.0.zip and
cm3-min-WIN32-NT386-d5.5.0-symbols.zip from 
    http://modula3.elegosoft.com/cm3/download.html 
 
10. Unzipped cm3-min-WIN32-NT386-d5.5.0.zip and stored resulting cm3
folder at C:\cm3
 
11. Unzipped cm3-min-WIN32-NT386-d5.5.0-symbols.zip and stored
resulting symbols folder at C:\cm3\symbols
 
12. Launch Windows Command Prompt shell.  The following steps represent
commands executed within this shell.
 
13. path %path%;c:\cm3\bin
 
14. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"
 
15. cd C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\scripts\win
 
16. upgrade.cmd
 
ERROR I'M GETTING:
=============
 
=== package C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3 ===
+++ "cm3 -build  -DROOT=C:\\CM3_CVS_SourceTree
-DCM3_VERSION_TEXT=d5.5.1 -DCM3_V
ERSION_NUMBER=050501 -DCM3_LAST_CHANGED=2007-12-30 && cm3 -ship
-DROOT=C:\\CM3_C
VS_SourceTree -DCM3_VERSION_TEXT=d5.5.1 -DCM3_VERSION_NUMBER=050501
-DCM3_LAST_C
HANGED=2007-12-30" +++
--- building in NT386 --- 
 
ignoring ..\src\m3overrides
 
"C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\version.quake", line 136: quake
runtime er
ror: unable to open
"C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\../NT386.datenow" for
reading
 
--procedure--  -line-  -file---
include            --  <builtin>
version_impl      136 
C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\version.quake
include_dir        20  C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\src\m3makefile
                    8 
C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3\NT386\m3make.args
 
Fatal Error: package build failed
ERROR: "cm3 -build  -DROOT=C:\\CM3_CVS_SourceTree
-DCM3_VERSION_TEXT=d5.5.1 -DCM
3_VERSION_NUMBER=050501 -DCM3_LAST_CHANGED=2007-12-30 && cm3 -ship
-DROOT=C:\\CM
3_CVS_SourceTree -DCM3_VERSION_TEXT=d5.5.1 -DCM3_VERSION_NUMBER=050501
-DCM3_LAS
T_CHANGED=2007-12-30"
ERROR: cd C:\CM3_CVS_SourceTree\m3-sys\cm3
ERROR: set INSTALLROOT=c:\cm3
 
Regards,
Randy
 
 

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