Compiling GnuCash on Windows 7 to debug MySQL crashes

[Art]

I blew several days and gave up. I initially downloaded the GnuCash binaries in 2009 and used it with the ".xml" database file. I wanted to use SQL, so I re-downloaded the binaries last month and converted my ".xml" data to MySQL, but it kept crashing and couldn't read it back and said the database was locked.

So, I downloaded MSYS, MinGW and installed them in f:/usr/msys/1.0 and f:/usr/mingw, respectively. I did the links, per the documentation, then ran install.sh from MSYS sitting in the /h/ws/repackaging directory, right out of the latest SVN build. It failed - badly. I don't know if this has been documented and I'm just reiterating the obvious, but, I'll say what I did and hopefully, someone will let me know what I did right and where I went wrong.

The initial binary failed with MySQL. I tried my personal login, root, both with @127.0.0.1 and @localhost.
Initial installation was,
GnuCash v2.4.10   - /cygdrive/f/usr/gnucash
MySQL v5.5.24   - /cygdrive/f/usr/MySQL/MySQL\ Server\
      5.5/
(I'm editing from Cygwin, but not running nor building GnuCash from Cygwin.)
I tried several versions of Perl and finally settled with msys-perl via mingw-get.

However, automake is broken,
pinaar at HVS2 ~
$ $INSTALLER_DIR/install.sh
Build Starting at Sun Jul 15 22:35:22 PDT 2012

############################################################
###  Wget
############################################################
already installed in /usr/local/bin.  skipping.

############################################################
###  MSYS DTK
############################################################
msys dtk already installed in /F/usr/msys/1.0.  skipping.
,,,
############################################################
###  Autotools
############################################################
Extracting autoconf-2.63.tar.bz2 ... done
Extracting automake-1.11.1.tar.bz2 ... done

!!! Exactly one directory is required, but detected 2; please delete all but the latest one: /h/pinaar/ws/tmp/autoconf-2.63 /h/pinaar/ws/tmp/autoconf-2.69 !!!
!!! ABORTING !!!
resetting msys to use original mingw.
mv: cannot stat `/etc/fstab.': No such file or directory

I worked around the broken "mv" command, failing every other time (I just used "cp").
Actually, the above response from the automake installation is different from this morning when I gave up. It was,
pinaar at HVS2 ~
$ automake --help
Can't locate Automake/Struct.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /mingw/share/automake-1.11 .) at f:/usr/mingw/bin/automake-1.11 line 46.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at f:/usr/mingw/bin/automake-1.11 line 46.


So, I was wracking my brains - I assumed it was Perl screwing up, but autoconf was pointed out by automake as broken when I tried to build automake from source.


I would love to build the code in Visual Studio 2010, but the Wiki said I had to build a basis with MSYS and MinGW.
(I am far more comfortable with the IDE to debug the MySQL problem.)

Thanks,
Art