Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] SDL build missing DX Headers

[Gregory Smith]

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010, Volker Grabsch wrote:

> Note that this is not a question of untarring. In mingw-cross-env,
> each package, source and binary, is first unpacked into a separate
> temporary directory. It is then built (if necessary) and installed.
> Please have a look at src/w32api.mk or src/mingwrt.mk to get an idea.

Yes, I meant that the idea is not to overwrite the library files.

> On the other hand, it is quite strange that "directx-devel" contains
> such a mix between w32api and directx development libraries. We should
> be able get the directx files directly.

Actually it is w32api that is strange: it includes directx libraries but 
not all necessary header files, I'm guessing for license reasons. The 
libraries and headers it does include are newer than the ones from the SDL 
tarball (presumably directx5), and the SDL tarball only includes missing 
header files, so it does not overwrite the newer header files w32api does 
decide to include, which is why (I'm guessing) installing the libraries 
from that tarball then causes a problem. You end up with a mix of newer 
header files and older libraries.

That said, installing just the header files from that tarball is 
sufficient to get SDL to compile with directx support.

> An interesting alternative might be the "dx80_mgw.zip" available at
> http://alleg.sourceforge.net/wip.html

This zip also includes both header files and libraries, but I presume they 
are complete and consistent, so installing both headers and libraries 
should be OK.

> Or we download the DirectX SDK directly from its source:
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx
>
> and convert it as explained in:
> http://nexe.gamedev.net/directKnowledge/default.asp?p=DirectX%20Development%20Using%20DevCpp

This would introduce a dependency on reimp, and is a lot of scripting work 
to go through when someone else has already done it :)

> Please try to find a simple, working solution. I'd be happy to create
> a "src/directx.mk" that provides DirectX support in mingw-cross-env.

Well, if the goal is only to get SDL to compile with directx support, the 
simple solution is to install the missing header files the SDL project 
itself provides. If you want to provide support for DirectX 8 development, 
we can use the allegro zip file, but since I am not doing DirectX 8 
development, I can't test any farther than making sure SDL compiles with 
directx support.

Gregory