[LLVMdev] Final Visual Studio Patches

[Reid Spencer]

Morten Ofstad wrote:
>  
> Well, actually I'm speaking mostly for myself ;-) I have a front end, I 
> want to generate code, all I really need is a llvm.lib and the include 
> files that go along with it... I imagine this is quite a common 
> scenario, but I might be wrong.

This is pretty much my usage scenario too, however I expect to be *able* to 
hack on the source and consequently rebuild it if I need too.  Furthermore, a 
large part of the usage of LLVM is currently in research where modifications 
are much more likely.

It sounds like there are two primary usage models, however:

1. I-just-need-a-backend-to-generate-code case:
    Here a simple binary distribution (tools, libraries, headers) would be
    sufficient.

2. I-need-to-hack-a-compiler-for-my-work/research case:
    Here the user needs full build control over everything (we can't pre-suppose
    which part of LLVM they want to hack on).

So, I think what we want is a full build environment anyway to satisfy case 2 
and generate the binary distribution for case 1.  Ideally what we want is a 
build system that can produce an msi installer on windows, rpms on RH, Solaris 
pkg on Sun, StuffIt on Mac (or whatever they use these days).  However, tgz or 
zip is probably sufficient for binary distributions for a while.

My point here is that we have 98% of what we need for *all* Unix platforms, the 
only missing link is Windows. So, why should we bastardize both worlds? 
Attempting windows conformance in the makefiles will make the Unix world 
unhappy. Attempting to unixify a windows build environment would make the 
windows world unhappy.  My vote is to just have both an MSVS project file and 
other supporting files added to a directory named "win" at the top level and 
let the windows folks keep it up to date. That way everyone is happy :)

Reid.