FAQ for Cygnus Win32
====================

Author: Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org>

Preparation
===========

You need the latest Cygwin. Since there are no Cygwin releases,
only a steady stream of updates and improvements, it is safe
to say that you need the latest. You can get Cygwin from 

	http://www.cygwin.com

You also need Jikes to build the class library. I'd recommend 
the latest version, at time of writing that is 1.22. You can get 
jikes from

	http://jikes.sf.net

You also need to apply one or two patches to jikes, in order to
fix some Cygwin specific bugs in it. See

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1202863&group_id=128803&atid=712760
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1202185&group_id=128803&atid=712760

for details. The first patch is for jikes 1.22, the second one is 
for jikes CVS head.

There is a jikes package in Cygwin now, but it can not be used yet
to compile GNU Classpath, which Kaffe uses as its class library.

There is a Kaffe port to mingw32, and it would be great if someone 
volunteered to merge it into the main tree. For more information, see
http://www.kaffe.org/pipermail/kaffe/2003-January/092896.html
http://kaffe.org/pipermail/kaffe/2004-April/097829.html

Configuration
=============

I tried various configuration options, and eventually settled for

	../kaffe/configure --with-gc=kaffe-gc --disable-native-awt \
	--with-staticvm --with-staticbin --with-threads=unix-jthreads \
	--enable-pure-java-math --disable-shared --with-pic=no

--with-gc=kaffe-gc sets the gc to kaffe's gc. it's the default, anyway, 
but I've had configure scripts do odd things on cygwin, so I set it 
manually to work around whatever made me set it manually. You may not 
need to set it explicitely.

--disable-native-awt disables the AWT build. I was not interested in 
building graphical applications for Cygwin/XFree86 and enabling it means 
dealing with X11 headers, Gtk+, ... which I didn't have a need for.
If someone makes the Qt4 peers work with Qt4-win32, please send you patches,
screenshots and success stories to the Kaffe mailing list kaffe@kafe.org.

--with-staticvm --with-staticbin was the combination that works for me, 
without linking problems. I preferred to avoid the linkage constraints on 
DLLs, though patches that make it all work without the need for 
static binaries would be appreciated. Send them to the mailing list,
as well.

--with-threads=unix-jthreads sets the threading model to jthreads, 
since the default pthreads seem to spend a few seconds getting stuck 
somewhere deep in windows/cygwin libraries, and eventually produce a 
warning message from Cygwin that only confuses the test scripts.

--enable-pure-java-math If you are not using crypto and don't have 
gmp installed.

--disable-shared Is necessary to make sure that libtool does not try to 
build shared libraries.

--with-pic=no Is necessary to avoid problems compiling the trampoline 
code.

Status
======

With this setup, and after a round or two of make && make check, I get 146 
passes out of 150 regression tests with the interpreter engine. 

There probably are various issues that the compiler warnings should be 
able to help interested developers fix. As usual, I'd appreciate patches.