On Fri, 25 May 2007, Mateusz Loskot wrote:

> I'm going to publish all codes I needed to add to libcurl to build it for
> Windows CE, as well as some HOWTO.

Great!

> I'd also love to see official patches in the libcurl CVS, but I feel it's
> not so straightforward as it may look like. In order to build libcurl for
> Windows CE, there are needed some extra packages bringing C/POSIX features
> missing on WinCE. There are a few packages that can be used here. Some users
> use wcecompat, I use my own WCELIBCEX
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wcelibcex), other use files from
> Python/Ruby sources etc.

I'm prepared to assist this work from the libcurl end, and given the specifics
on the Windows CE environment I think it is only fair to depend on a separate
package such as this WCELIBCEX one. I find it better to rely on it as a
separate package since:

  1) other packages may also need/want it to build for Win CE and then it makes
     sense for them to use WCELIBCEX too

  2) work on WCELIBCEX is likely to happen indpendently of libcurl due to 1)
     and just because there might be specific bugs/work-arounds/features that
     are needed/wanted in there for win ce that aren't actual libcurl issues.

  3) duplicating code is always bad in the long term

> 1. Include all functions/definitions required for Windows CE to libcurl
> sources.

Just for the record and curiosity, how many functions and definitions would
this be?

> 2. Do not include any of missing C/POSIX features to libcurl, but prepare
> a few HOWTOs with list of required features and explaining how to build
> libcurl using:
> - wcecompat
> - WCELIBCEX
> - etc.
>
> The latter would be convenient for power users only I think.

Well, I've learned that more or less only "power users" ever build libcurl on
windows anyway and building libcurl for various kinds of embedded systems
really requires people with clues in the first place so I don't think we need
to be scared of providing a documented do-it-yourself procedure.

As long as this procedure is not too many (complicated) steps of course.

> There is also some variety with building systems. For older versions of
> Windows CE 3.x/4.x for which eMbedded Visual C++ 3.0/4.0 compiler is used,
> there are configuration .BAT scripts and makefiles available. For Windows CE
> 5.0 and Visual C++ 2005, these .BAT scripts are missing and most of users
> rely on Visual C++ project files. All these issues make the overall task
> non-trivial.

Let's start somewhere with the stuff you have got working and building, and
then others should be able to give feedback and adjustments for other
environments they use.

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