[Box Backup-dev] Win32 build

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Martin,

> Does the mingw build use the same build system as the unix platforms - 
> are the extra build hacks only for msvc?

Yes, that's right.

> If so and it produces a working win32 binary then is there any reason to 
> support two platforms for win32?

Only that the MinGW build requires Cygwin, which some developers are 
opposed to or just not used to. If we drop support for MSVC and Cygwin 
then we will likely lose the support of Nick and Charles.

> Maintaining two completely separate build systems is a bad idea and a 
> long term maintenance headache, especially because unix developers 
> cannot change the windows one. We should only do it if we have to.

Perhaps we can find a way to auto-generate win32.bat and the MSVC 
project files at release time? If so, and we can react appropriately to 
bug reports from MSVC users, then it doesn't look so bad to me.

Cheers, Chris.
-- 
_ ___ __     _
  / __/ / ,__(_)_  | Chris Wilson <0000 at qwirx.com> - Cambs UK |
/ (_/ ,\/ _/ /_ \ | Security/C/C++/Java/Perl/SQL/HTML Developer |
\ _/_/_/_//_/___/ | We are GNU-free your mind-and your software |