[cmake-developers] Recent good Windows platform test results on Wine

[Alan W. Irwin]

The CMake/MinGW/MSYS/Wine platform is useful for free (in
both senses) Windows platform testing of software that is normally
developed on Linux or Mac OS X.

Here is the status report for the combination of CMake-2.8.10.2,
MinGW-4.7.0, and MSYS on the Wine-1.5.19 platform that is
accessible from Linux.

That combination of versions appears to work essentially flawlessly.
Note, I am using the downloaded Windows binary version of
CMake-2.8.10.2 rather than bootstrap building it, although I presume
bootstrapping would work as well since that worked for an earlier
version of Wine.

I have recently used this combination of versions to build, install,
and test shapelib (a minor prerequisite of PLplot), PLplot (including
Fortran 95 and Python bindings of that C library), ephcom (including
Fortran 95 and C bindings of that C library), and te_gen (a Fortran 95
library that depends on ephcom).  The tests were quite extensive and
took several hours of cpu time to complete.

Note, that using Wine this way is still for early adopters.  For
example, Wine-1.5.x is a series of unstable releases where problems
come and go.  Versions of Wine earlier than 1.5.17 or so had some
issues with numerical precision and also did not provide one key bit
of functionality required by recent CMake versions. All those issues
have been fixed somewhere between Wine-1.5.17 and 1.5.19 so I get
flawless results for 1.5.19.  However, this Windows testing platform 
is not recommended yet for mainstream use. For example, a regression
has been introduced for Wine-1.5.20 compared to Wine-1.5.19 such that
the MinGW gcc command run from bash.exe _always_ segfaults regardless
of how simple the programme is that is being compiled. I have reported
that issue on the wine-devel list, and it remains to be seen how
quickly the Wine developers respond once back from Chrismas holidays.

But because the combination of CMake-2.8.10.2, MinGW-4.7.0, and MSYS
on the Wine-1.5.19 does seem to provide a stable free testing platform
for CMake-based builds on Windows, I do recommend that early adopter
types who are interested in cross-platform testing of their software
give that combination a try.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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