[penguin]

Well, after a long hiatus, I can finally devote some time to this project again  Looks like a lot of good things have been going on in my absence; nice work Inquisitor and all of the coders

What can I work on? Some things I've gleaned from the threads:

• Launcher
• MinGWin/gcc makefile tuning
• Linux port
• Movie code

Eagerly awaiting suggestions from the crowd...

[Bobboau]

actualy I think the thing that could most use you're talents would be the multiplayer aspect, we need a PXO replacement and you are probly the only person capable of makeing one

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Anybody remember this guy?!?

I know Multiplayer is a big part of FS but wouldn't editing the code so that we could use a free compiler with it be a better idea? All those people who can't afford VC++ would now be able to mess with it. Of course I'm just blathering 'cos I really can't do anything to help but it does seem like a sensible idea.

Building from the ground up. *shrugs*
[/color]

[Inquisitor]

Happy happy.

[Ryx]

[penguin]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
I know Multiplayer is a big part of FS but wouldn't editing the code so that we could use a free compiler with it be a better idea? All those people who can't afford VC++ would now be able to mess with it. Of course I'm just blathering 'cos I really can't do anything to help but it does seem like a sensible idea

I think I'm gonna defer on the MP stuff for now... I have a new Windows machine and my first task will be to get the fs2_open code to compile using the free MinGW toolset for Windows... it includes gcc and a bunch of other free development tools.  

Once I have a stable development environment (again), I think the first task will be movies... from conversations w/ Inquisitor, it seems like that's where I could be the most help right now.

I'll post my war stories regarding MinGW, it looks promising, but it's a new environment to me (though I use gcc on Linux every day of my life...)  FYI, MinGW is available at http://www.mingw.org

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]

Just as a matter of interest why don't you use cygwin? Isn't it generally more popular?

[/color]

[Inquisitor]

MiniGW is gaining ground

[penguin]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]
Just as a matter of interest why don't you use cygwin? Isn't it generally more popular?
[/color]

It was a little bit of research, and a little bit of guesswork... it might not be 100% the right decision, but hopefully they both should be fairly compatible, as they're both gcc based...

One quote that stood out (from http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/34.html)was:

Cygwin is a Unix/POSIX compatibility layer built on top of the Win32 API. The Cygwin version of gcc is designed to help people compile C programs that make use of POSIX APIs. The Cygwin version of gcc was not designed to support compiling Win32 native applications. Some support for Win32 applications was added later via the -mno-cygwin command line switch, but it is far from perfect.

The Mingw project was created to produce a version of gcc that supports building native Win32 applications. This version of gcc is a native Windows application, it does not depend on the Cygwin dll and it does not link generated applications to the Cygwin dll. In fact, it is simply not possible to create an executable that accidently requires the Cygwin dll when compiling with the Mingw version of gcc. This can be a problem with the Cygwin version of gcc, especially when C++ is involved.

Since I was interested in building a native Win32 app (not porting a POSIX app to Windows), it seemed to make sense to me.  YMMV

I've been running into the usual issues of GCC vs. MSVC, but hopefully will have something presentable after tonight's session...