Re: next release of Lout is approaching

[KHMan]

Remo Dentato wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Jeff Kingston <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I have just started preparing the next version of Lout, which
> > I hope to release a few weeks from now.
> [snip]
> I have just one suggestions: would you incorporate into the official
> distribution, KHMan's changes to compile Lout on Windows? Just
> supporting mingw would be ok, one could have a "mingw" entry in the
> makefile.

To summarize this thread:

I will add a notice to the next MinGW release to make it clear 
that it is an 'as is' port and an evolutionary dead end. It's a 
"old times' sake" port (it was first thingy I released on SF), 
plus I am not currently using it anyway.

For serious work, Cygwin is the way to go. Lout compiles 
out-of-the-box in Cygwin (except to set USELOC=0 for me). Maybe 
I'll do some testing and set up a wiki page for this.

Some backgrounder on why I did the MinGW port. Back when I did the 
port, I was still using command line prompts and DJGPP. I did not 
want to set up Cygwin through dial-up, also Cygwin then I think 
was using funny-looking version numbers. Porting Lout is a small 
do-able project and one could sneak into a project like Lout 
easier than trying to get Linux patches accepted. :-)

Now, it is easier to set up and maintain Cygwin with broadband. My 
DJGPP folder is in deep freeze. My batch files have been taken 
over by Bash or Perl scripts. DOS Prompt is for running ipconfig 
only. I have no wish to touch any other proprietary command line 
or scripting solutions. In this scenario, command-line MinGW Lout 
is more like relic of the past. Rather than supporting it forever, 
I think it should be phased out in favour of the better 
alternative, which is Cygwin.

If anyone wants to take over the MinGW release, let me know. Or 
perhaps I should announce end-of-life by the end of 2009 and pull 
the plug on the MinGW port then. :-)

--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia