Re: Building CAP5 under windows or cygwin

[Andrew Johnson <anj@aps.anl.gov>]

Hi David,

Are you using the version of CAP5 that is in R3.14.10-RCn, or the 
stand-alone version that I published some time back?

On Sun, 12 Oct 2008, David Morris wrote:

> Has anyone looked into building cap5 under Windows or cygwin? I don't 
> understand the build process well enough to figure out what is wrong.

I did briefly, but I don't have time to work on it, and I suspect the 
result can't be guaranteed to work on all systems; unless you have built 
your own copy of Perl, the C compiler you're using to build EPICS might be 
different to the one that built Perl so the DLLs it generates might not be 
compatible.  I am however by no means an expert on Windows, so I would be 
very happy for someone to contradict me on that.

> Under Windows, the xsubpp does not run to create the source code for Cap5.c, 
> so it does not produce anything usable. I am using the Visual C++ 2008 
> Express, which I used to successfully build EPICS using the cygwin toolchain. 
> I have the environment set to find the Microsoft tools. I'm not sure which 
> Perl to use, whether this should be the ActivePerl or the cygwin perl.

I think you would have to use the ActiveState Perl with the MicroSoft 
compiler, because cygwin perl doesn't understand DOS drive letters (I'm 
assuming that ActiveState use the MicroSoft compiler).

> Under cygwin, the build gets farther, and the source files are created in 
> O.cygwin, but there are errors further on. The cygwin build is not so 
> important, I was just hoping one of these would build successfully...

The issue is how to create DLLs that Perl can load.  I think I gave up 
trying, but I didn't try to use the Perl approach to building an XS 
library and that might be sufficient to get this working.  I would be very 
happy to see patches to fix this issue, but you might have to find an 
expert in Perl5 XS to resolve it.  It probably needs the funtion names to 
be decorated in the .c file as well, which I realize I haven't done.

Sorry if this isn't what you wanted to hear, but good luck if you try to 
get it going...

- Andrew