[ccan] [PATCH 0/9] configurator: Support for Windows and MSVC

[Kevin Locke]

Hi David,

Thank you for taking the time to review these patches, especially for a 
platform that you don't have a strong stake in.  I really appreciate it.

On 09/19/2016 10:48 PM, David Gibson wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 06:51:57PM -0600, Kevin Locke wrote:
>> This patch series adds support for building configurator with Microsoft
>> Visual C++ and running it on Windows.  The motivation is to add
>> sufficient support for Windows to allow using header-only modules
>> with minimal hassle.  For me, this patch series is sufficient, so I
>> don't have any further plans for changes to other files or the build
>> system at the moment.
>
> First, thanks for this.  ccan isn't supposed to be platform specific,
> but it kind of is at the moment, simply because most of the
> contributions have been from Linux developers.  I'm really happy to
> see some work to make it useful on different platforms.
>
> Second, because I'm not and have never been a Windows dev, my ability
> to review these is limited - so I'm inclined to apply anything that
> doesn't break builds on Linux / POSIX.
>
> Third, because most of the main ccan contributors are not Windows
> devs, I'm a bit worried about bitrot.  If you can think of any way of
> making some kind of automated smoke test form builds on Windows, that
> would be terrific.  Otherwise, I guess we'll just hope for the best.

I think that's a very legitimate concern.  I'm not a frequent Windows 
developer myself, but had a need for a current project.  I've tried to 
minimize the amount of Windows-specific code, with good results I think, 
but that's obviously not much of a guarantee that it won't rot or subtly 
break on Windows going forward.

I've seen appveyor.com used quite often for Windows CI, and it is free 
for FOSS projects.  I'd be happy to work up some basic smoke tests if it 
seems like that might be useful and not too much of a maintenance 
burden.  Let me know what you think.

Thanks again,
Kevin