62773 - Make Mozilla buildable with Borland free compiler

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Build Config, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

This RFE bug is here to help interested people in gathering all the knowledge in
one place so that one day we could build Mozilla on Windows with free tools.

You can download the Free Borland C++ Builder 5.5 Compiler (command line tool)
and other useful tools from here (requires free registration):

http://www.borland.com/bcppbuilder/freecompiler/

Microsoft also offers its nmake 1.5 for free, and you can download it from here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/Nmake15.exe

Feel free to list other useful tools & tips, and be welcome to attach patches.

Comment 1

[cls]

Windows.

Comment 2

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Borland also offers the TurboDebugger for free (same place as the compiler).

At this time there are 2 patches for the compiler:

http://www.borland.com/devsupport/bcppbuilder/patches/

There is some additional documentation about the compiler switches (even some
that are not documented at Borland docs) at:

http://www.sirma.bg/knowledgebase

They also show how to use the 5.5 compiler with older IDE if you happen to have
that.

There are some free IDEs available but at the moment I do not know anything
about them.

Comment 3

[timeless]

Attachment: patches to config/

Comment 4

[timeless]

Attachment: patches to nsprpub/

Comment 5

[timeless]

these patches don't work perfectly and I probably need to describe my build env 
in order for people to even try to use them.

These patches are not for review and should only be used as a starting point.

nsprpub still needs a bit of work [convincing bcc to compile .c files as C 
files]

 -3    * 80386 Instructions
 -4      80486 Instructions
 -5      Pentium Instructions
you'll need to build w/ at least -4 [probably -5]

Comment 6

[Jure Repinc (JLP)]

CC Add
It would be really nice!

Comment 7

[timeless]

http://home.clara.net/paulyg/compfree.htm might be a useful reference.

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 59195.

Comment 9

[Daniel (Leaf) Nunes]

I can't seem to register... "Internal Server Error" or some such.
I'll try applying the patches and seeing if things break for the defacto current
standard development toolset. CC'ing larry for the nspr changes.

Comment 10

[timeless]

there's one more thing that i need to do for nsprpub which has to do w/ _ 
prefixing, so the nsprpub is not actually reviewable.  I think I came across 
the solution recently but I don't remember it offhand.

Comment 11

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

leaf (and others): bug 59195 is about compiling JS with Borland & MW CodeWarrior
on Windows. Someone has actually made this, although the makefiles were done
with the Borland IDE (which is not free). Does JS use NSPR? If so, we should
look at those files as well. There are links to zip packages that compile with
bcc in that bug. There is also good discussion what is different in regard to to
C/C++ language in that compiler (for example, the binding order of some
operators is different).

Comment 12

[Stephan Niemz]

What about gcc and gmake? AFAIK, they work on Windows, too.

Comment 13

[Håkan Waara]

From http://www.mozilla.org/build/win32.html#ss2.1  :

"Microsoft Visual C++ version 5.0 or later (make sure you have set up the
compiler using the vcvars32.bat script that came with it)"

This is why this bug was filed in the first place.

Comment 14

[Daniel (Leaf) Nunes]

gcc and gmake do work, running on a layer that makes the builds hideously slow. 
If we can make it work with another free compiler that isn't so slow, we *might* 
have a case for asking all the windows programmers to give a new development 
environment a shot.

Comment 15

[Chad Austin]

I think building Mozilla in Cygwin (with -mno-cygwin per your comment, leaf) 
would be very, very cool.

I had to wait for the better part of a week for a copy of VC++ so I could just 
build the lizard.

Comment 16

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Does this depend on bug 59195 ?

Comment 17

[Daniel (Leaf) Nunes]

microsoft doesn't provide a standalone nmake for download anymore (i knew it
wasn't going to last). So, we have to go on the assumption that we are stuck
with either insinuating a windows build into the unix build system, or that we
have to retool all the makefile.win files to be compatible with both nmake and
borland's make (something i find highly unlikely).

Comment 18

[timeless]

:-( was the license on microsoft's nmake good enough for redistribution? i
wonder if a make from openwatcom.org or digitalmars.com would be usable?

Comment 19

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Borland make has nmake compatibility mode, but it does not work very well. I
would think it would be nearly trivial to change it to support some of the nmake
things we have in Mozilla tree. Now that nmake is not publicly available,
Borland might be more inclined to make the changes.

Comment 20

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

The download link for Nmake is still working for me

Comment 21

[timeless]

fwiw the nmake I think we're talking about is
http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/Nmake15.exe
from mskb: Q132084
i suppose i should run depends.exe to find out what it requires...

Comment 22

[Jon Granrose]

bug cleanup - all leaf's bugzilla bugs should be assigned to [e-mail]
(not [e-mail]), now and any future bugs created.

this should be a one time change, apologies for the spam.

Comment 23

[Chase Phillips]

Mass reassign of open bugs for [e-mail] to [e-mail].

Comment 24

[J. Paul Reed [:preed]]

Resolving WONTFIX, due to no real activity since 2001.

Re-open (and assign to either yourself or [e-mail]) if you disagree.