RE: [Gcl-devel] use XDR with GCL on Windows

[Mike Thomas]

Hi Bill.

| As the windows guru for GCL I am addressing this to you

When I have worked out why the ANSI GCL build crashes on Windows I will feel
that I deserve that title.  Until then, "Frustrated Mike" will do thanks.

| My goal is to build Axiom to run under Windows using
| MinGW and GCL. Tim Daly has provided several patches to
| GCL 2.5.2 in order to support Axiom under linux. (See
| cvs at tenkan.org) This works under linux.


Can you be more specific about the address of that site or those patches
please.


| I am able to compile GCL 2.5.2 under minGW without the
| pathes. But Axiom apparently requires XDR (and a few
| other changes). Apply one of the pathes, which inserts
|
|   #define HAVE_XDR
|
| into the mingw.h causes the compiler to attempt to
| include the file rpc/rpc.h and related code. Unfortunately
| the rpc.h that is part of MinGW does not include the
| XDR functionality.
|
| I got as far as downloading some rpc code that does include
| XDR and *might* compile with MinGW
|
|   http://www.plt.rwth-aachen.de/ks/english/oncrpc.html
|
| (which you recommended some time back)

Only yesterday I wondered why you never got back about the RPC
functionality.  The geologist in me decided it was one of those miraculous
moments when everything goes right.

| but including the oncrpc headers in the GCL o/makefile leads
| to some warnings of incompatible definitions (which can be
| fixed) and finally to a gcc compiler message that I don't
| understand.


I commented out the definitions in "rpc/bcopy.h" to stop this problem.


|   gcc -c -Wall -fwritable-strings -DVOL=volatile -fsigned-char
| -march=i386  -I/home/axiomgnu/new/lsp/gcl-2.5.2/o  -I../h -I../gcl-tk -I
| /c/oncrpc funlink.c
| C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp/ccwtaaaa.s: Assembler messages:
| C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp/ccwtaaaa.s:9048: Error: length of
| .comm "_D" is already 16; not changing to 528
|
| -------
|
| So, where should I go from here? Has anyone successfully built
| GCL for windows with rpc and XDR?


I just did this morning with the 2.5.3 source release code using the MinGW32
build of the ONCRPC library which I will shortly send to you separately, and
gcc 3.2.1, which is the one supplied with the Windows GCL binary release.
All went smoothly, I'm pleased to say.

Make sure you copy the dll in the ONCRPC bin directory into your path
somewhere, the RPC header directory into your include directory, and
"librpclib.a" into your lib directory.

In addition to adding that define you mentioned above, you should also add
"-lrpclib" to the list of libraries for the link.


| Should I start with some
| other source code for rpc that would be more compatible with
| MinGW? Is there a way to avoid the compiler error? Other ideas?


My guess is not until you see whether the system works.  I don't know much
about XDR, so I can't really help much in respect of the details.

Would it help if I incorporate the XDR functionality into the current
Windows binary download?  I suppose that those patches from Tim Daly will
then not be available.

Cheers

Mike Thomas.