Building on Windows from scratch - follow up

[Geert Janssens]

This weekend I have spent more time on getting the Windows build running 
with more recent mingw compilers (gcc 4.8).

This is a continuation of the work I have started in December last year.

Current status:
- I have forked packaging/win32 into a separate directory with the clear 
goal of decoupling the maintenance of a build environment on Windows 
from gnucash releases. This repository is currently publicly accessible 
from my personal github account:
https://github.com/gjanssens/gnucash-on-windows
Ultimately it is my goal to bring this repository under the GnuCash 
project umbrella but not everything is working yet (more on that later).
- The install and dist scripts have been updated so that a working 
gnucash installer can be built in the new mingw environment. Up until 
yesterday afternoon gnucash installed by the installer worked as well. I 
haven't tested the build with the new c++ changes yet.

What's still missing:
- the scripts for the build server need some tweaking in order to build 
tags under the new configuration.
- improve documentation
- set up desktop icon for msys.

Future plans:
- fix the build server scripts
- reduce build overhead by smartening the install scripts

Wild, halfbaked ideas for the long term:
- switch to mingw64 [1] and win-builds [2]
- package the gnucash dependencies for win-builds and reduce setting the 
gnucash environment to running the win-builds package manager

Lastly, how to use my repository ?
- Download the bootstrap_win_dev.vbs script. It has some documentation 
at the beginning. Running it is mostly a double-click. This will prepare 
a c:\gcdev directory with the minimal tools required to run install.sh
- Start msys (c:\gcdev\mingw\msys\1.0\msys.bat)
- cd /c/gcdev/gnucash-on-windows.git
- install.sh
and if you want to create the windows installer as well:
- dist.sh

Please test and provide feedback.

Geert


[1] http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://win-builds.org/