[CMake] Cygwin drive paths are killing me

[Eric Wing]

On 6/14/14, David Cole <dlrdave at aol.com> wrote:

> You are persistent... One of the keys to your success, I'm sure. But,
> out of curiosity... if you have Linux and Mac environments all set up
> already, why not build the Android stuff from one of those platforms??
> Why go through all the pain of getting an Android build working from
> Windows?
>

To answer your question David, I'm working on a new middleware product
to help people build their own cross-platform applications
(specifically games). I've decided to use CMake as the foundation
layer for the build system and resource management.
But this has several implications, one of which is users expect this
stuff to work on the platforms they want to use. Since Android
*technically* supports Windows, I've felt obligated to try to make
this work, even though the Android NDK is total crap.

I'm definitely putting disclaimers in about how they should use Mac or
Linux. I'm guessing they won't listen at first, but just the regular
Android/Windows setup process is painful so maybe they'll fatigue and
then listen. But having something that works helps, instead of people
assuming I don't know what I'm doing. (You don't know how often I get
this in middleware from higher-level Android developers who have been
so insulated by the products I've worked on, that don't understand how
terrible Android is.)

A side note, one positive thing I found was in a survey we did about a
year ago, 90% of the people were using Macs to develop for Android.
Unfortunately, Linux was a rounding error and the remaining 10% was
Windows.


I tend to agree with your statements about not using Unix environments
on Windows. It's Windows. Go run a real Unix if you want Unix. I've
been burned by Cygwin in the past too so I've gone out of my way to
not use it. Unfortunately, Android always finds new ways to make me
suffer.

Thanks,
Eric