[cmake-developers] What is the difference between "Unix Makefiles" and "MSYS Makefiles" on MSYS2?

[Alan W. Irwin]

I got no response on the CMake list to the question below so I thought
I had better ask instead the CMake developers here just what are the
actual differences (if any) between the "Unix Makefiles" and "MSYS
Makefiles" generators?

The point is that if both openwalnut builds on MSYS2 succeed with
"Unix Makefiles" and allegro builds on MSYS2 succeed with "MSYS
Makefiles", then the differences between the two generators might be
minimal/unimportant so I could just recommend to PLplot users that
they can use either generator on MSYS2.  But I would appreciate your
comments on that possibility before I made such a recommendation.

Alan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 19:25:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca>
To: cmake at cmake.org
Subject: [CMake] Using cmake on the MSYS2 platform(s)

Recently, I have found two useful resources 
(<http://www.openwalnut.org/projects/openwalnut/wiki/InstallMSYS2>)
and <https://wiki.allegro.cc/index.php?title=Building_with_msys2>)
giving advice on how to
use cmake with MSYS2 and its collection of packages compiled with
either the the mingw-w64-i686 or mingw-w64-x86_64 toolchains.
(For further background on MSYS2, its tool chains, and it's
pacman package repositories see
<http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20introduction/>.)

The cmake advice from the openwalnut and allegro sites is essentially
consistent except for one issue which is what generator to use? The
openwalnut site recommends "Unix Makefiles" to build openwalnut while
the allegro site recommends "MSYS Makefiles" to build allegro.

Although I am sure those two generators work for their own peculiar
build needs on the MSYS2 platforms is there a general recommendation
that anyone here has for the recommended generator to use for the MSYS2
platforms?

Note this question and the openwalnut and allegro comments are
concerned with the case where you are using MSYS2 build tools (e.g.,
make, pkg-config, grep, sed, gzip, and tar) and not the case where you
are building using either of the mingw-w64-i686 or mingw-w64-x86_64
toolchains without the MSYS2 build tools.

Also note that although the MSYS2 project is a similar concept to
classical MSYS (which is an ancient spin-off from Cygwin), the details
can be quite different because MSYS2 is a modern spin-off from Cygwin.
Therefore, recommending a MinGW/MSYS solution e.g., "MSYS Makefiles"
for the MSYS2 case may or may not be more appropriate than
recommending a Cygwin solution, e.g., "Unix Makefiles" for the MSYS2
case.  So what I need here is a recommendation based on actual experience
with MSYS2 and not MSYS.

Alan
__________________________
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).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________
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