Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:6026
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <09a401c3b92d$a5d03b20$8802a8c0@obsidian>
To: <internals@lists.php.net>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 23:40:18 -0000
Organization: The Brain Room Ltd.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: New win32 build system
From: wez@thebrainroom.com ("Wez Furlong")

I've committed the build infrastructure for the 
"real programmers don't need an IDE" build system for win32.

Why?
- It's frustrating to have to use VC6 to work on PHP if you
  have a newer version that has incompatible project files.
- It's annoying to mess around with libxml2 stuff until it
  stabilizes :-) and a pain to have to remember to edit
  the config.w32.h header each time, and a pain to have to
  avoid accidentally committing those changes each time.
- It's difficult to set up a fully working build environment
  for PHP without installing everything.
- It's difficult for people without VC6 to create a win32
  project file for their extensions.

Requirements:
You need windows script host (cscript.exe) and JScript installed.
This should be a standard config on windows machines since win98
(perhaps optional under win98).

You also need the Microsoft build tools (cl.exe, link.exe and nmake.exe).
These are freely available as part of the Platform SDK, but also
come with VC++/Visual Studio.

Finally, you need the php_build dir that contains all the
headers and libraries for the things that php is linked
against; see [1] for details.

Usage:
Check out PHP 5 and run buildconf.bat from the root of the php
source.  This script is roughly equivalent to the unix buildconf
in that it scans ext/* and sapi/* for config.w32 files describing
optional build components and generates a configure script
named configure.js

Now run "cscript configure.js --help" to get a list of configure
options; enable and disable stuff as appropriate.

Then type nmake to build the things you configured.

You will find the various .exe and .dll files in the build dir
that configure selects for you based on debug and zts settings;
it will be one of the usual Debug_TS, Release_TS, Debug or Release
dirs found under the source root.

You can also run the test suite by running "nmake test".
[we have some issues under win32 with current CVS!]

TODO:
- Write config.w32 files for more extensions and sapis.
  They're quite easy (just a couple of javascript function calls)
  and can be put together almost without thinking by copying the
  guts of the config.m4 file from the same extension.
- add those .rc files with version info the generated .dll's and .exe's
- Test if it actually works under win98 (Steph?)
  There are only two places that I suspect might have difficulty
  under win98.

[1] 
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.php#install.windows.build