159723 - (VisualStudio) Building Mozilla for Win32 should not require Microsoft Visual Studio

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 134113

(SeaMonkey :: Build Config, enhancement)

Description

[Damian Yerrick]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1a+) Gecko/20020709
BuildID:    2002070908

According to http://www.mozilla.org/build/win32.html

  The following need to be installed for a standard win32 build:
    * Microsoft Visual C++ version 6.0 or later

  However, if you plan to use a GNU make build, only the following
  need to be installed:
    * Microsoft Visual C++ version 6.0 or later

According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/howtobuy/pricing.asp

  Visual Studio .NET Professional (Full Packaged Product) $1,079 US

Is The Mozilla Organization justified in excluding those who
cannot afford a VS.NET license from developing patches to the
code base of Mozilla for Windows?  If not, I'd like to suggest
that somebody makes the necessary changes to the build process
that would let Mozilla for Windows build correctly using
Cygwin's gcc.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Be born into a family that is not independently wealthy.
2. Learn the three R's.
3. Acquire a computer with Windows and Cygwin installed.
4. Learn C++.

Actual Results:  Mozilla does not build because
Microsoft Visual Studio.NET was not found.

Expected Results:  Mozilla builds on Cygwin.

If anybody is concerned about the license issues, note that
Red Hat licenses Cygwin1.dll for use with any OSI Certified(tm)
open source software, and it's possible to configure Cygwin
to use the mingw32 runtime instead, which connects to the
same libraries Microsoft Visual C++ uses.

Workaround:  Buy a second computer, install Linux on it, develop
the Linux version of Mozilla, and let the Windows version rot.
This may actually be cheaper than buying MSVC.

Comment 1

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 134113 ***

Comment 2

[Wesha]

vrfy dupe

Comment 3

[Wesha]

Damian, you missed another possible workaround: trash Microsoft and/or current
copyright laws. Might not be cheap, but definitely worthy. =^.^=

Comment 4

[cls]

Ugh, this is obviously a dupe but there a several inferences that need to be
addressed here.
1) .NET (ie, MSVC7) is not required so the pricing for .NET is irrelevant.*
2) The entire Visual Studio suite is not required. Just Visual c++.
3) You can usually find things cheaper at a retail store than buying direct
(unless buying in bulk).  
4) The most important point to make here though is that MSVC creates a usuable
product with the desired feature set whereas cygwin & mingw gcc do not.  See bug
134113 for the details. 
5) Rants about the Mozilla Organization's policy of requiring a commercial
compiler to compile open source code should be sent to [e-mail] and not
buried in bug report. (Though as I outlined in bug 134113, if no one steps up to
the plate to contribute, m.o is completely justified in only supporting MSVC.)

* (Looking at the product comparisions, it looks as though MS has made their
"standard" edition look a bit less enticing than their "professional" edition. 
A non-optimizing c++ compiler?  However, that's purely on MS' shoulders and not
something m.o can do anything about.)