[racket] "Hybrid" Racket on Cygwin

At Sat, 18 Sep 2010 21:55:40 -0400, Eli Barzilay wrote:
> On Sep 19, Thomas Chust wrote:
> > I'm interested in building Racket for Cygwin but with
> > Win32-GDI-based GUI libraries instead of X11-based GUI
> > libraries. The configure script doesn't seem to allow for this
> > setup, but since Racket already has support for Win32 GUIs and since
> > nothing prevents a Cygwin program from calling directly into the
> > Win32 APIs this should theoretically be possible without much
> > effort.
> > 
> > I would be glad if anyone with some insight into the build system
> > could give me a few hints what I would have to do to make such a
> > setup possible.
> 
> That's likely to be very difficult, since the Windows stuff is very
> different from the usual configure script.

I agree. Even ignoring project and Makefile pain, the C++ code that
connects Racket to Win32 probably uses a lot of MSVCisms, and I think
it would be difficult to get it through g++, to try to compile Racket
for Cygwin using MSVC, or to try to make binaries from the two
compilers link together.


(We're in the process of getting rid of the C++ code completely. If a
Cygwin+Win32 hybrid is somehow useful, I think it will be much easier
with the replacement GUI-library implementation. When it's ready.)