[U-Boot] Using MinGW gcc cross-compiling host tools for Windows broken

[Bin Meng]

Hi Peter,

On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 10:44 AM Peter Tyser <ptyser at xes-inc.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Bin,
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Bin Meng" <bmeng.cn at gmail.com>
> > To: "ptyser" <ptyser at xes-inc.com>, "Vladimir Yakovlev" <nagos at inbox.ru>, "Mike Frysinger" <vapier at gentoo.org>, "Remy
> > Bohmer" <linux at bohmer.net>, "U-Boot Mailing List" <u-boot at lists.denx.de>
> > Cc: "Tom Rini" <trini at konsulko.com>
> > Sent: Monday, October 14, 2019 4:46:16 AM
> > Subject: Using MinGW gcc cross-compiling host tools for Windows broken
>
> > Hi Peter,
> >
> > I noticed that you were the first one that added support to build
> > native Win32 tools using MinGW GCC via:
> >
> > commit 2f8d396b9302eddcd8d552648e101a46b7a80acd
> > Author: Peter Tyser <ptyser at xes-inc.com>
> > Date:   Fri Mar 13 18:54:51 2009 -0500
> >
> >    Add support for building native win32 tools
> >
> >    Add support for compiling the host tools in the tools directory using
> >    the MinGW toolchain.  This produces executables which can be used on
> >    standard Windows computers without requiring cygwin.
> >
> >    One must specify the MinGW compiler and strip utilities as if they
> >    were the host toolchain in order to build win32 executables, eg:
> >
> >    make HOSTCC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc HOSTSTRIP=i586-mingw32msvc-strip tools
> >
> >    Signed-off-by: Peter Tyser <ptyser at xes-inc.com>
> >
> > There are also several follow-up commits that fixed the build errors
> > from time to time:
> >
> > commit 8b6a4952e6064dc558cb7d5d375990b17491f26f
> > Author: Vladimir Yakovlev <nagos at inbox.ru>
> > Date:   Sat Jul 7 10:05:06 2012 +0000
> >
> >    tools: Fix mingw tools build
> >
> >    mkenvimage does not build due to missed os_support.o and unsupported
> >    file modes S_IRGRP S_IWGRP.
> >    Tested with mingw 4.2.1 on ubuntu 12.04.
> >
> >    Signed-off-by: Vladimir Yakovlev <nagos at inbox.ru>
> >
> > commit b050c72d52c4e30d5b978ab6758f8dcdbe5c690c
> > Author: Mike Frysinger <vapier at gentoo.org>
> > Date:   Tue Apr 20 05:49:30 2010 -0400
> >
> >    compiler.h: add uint typedef
> >
> >    Recent crc changes started using the "uint" type in headers that are used
> >    on the build system.  This subsequently broke mingw targets as they do not
> >    provide such a type.  So add this basic typedef to compiler.h so that we
> >    do not have to worry about this breaking again in the future.
> >
> >    Signed-off-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier at gentoo.org>
> >
> > commit faf36c1437c95e4a86835633d9801c5f6396a3c7
> > Author: Remy Bohmer <linux at bohmer.net>
> > Date:   Wed Oct 28 22:13:36 2009 +0100
> >
> >    Fix mingw tools build
> >
> >    mkimage does not build due to missing strtok_r() and getline()
> > implementation
> >
> >    Signed-off-by: Remy Bohmer <linux at bohmer.net>
> >
> > Today I tried to build the Windows tools by following the README, and
> > got build errors.
> >
> > $ make HOSTCC=/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc tools
> >
> > note: I am running this from Linux. It's not clear to me whether we
> > should run this from Windows natively or cross-compile on Linux.
>
> It was intended to be cross-compiled on a Linux box.
>
> > It seems that this MinGW Windows build has been broken for quite a long time.
> >
> > Will you address this? Thanks!
>
> I had a quick look at getting compilation working, and my vote is to remove
> support for the MinGW compilation.

Thanks for looking at this.

> - It can't be too popular since the compilation issues haven't been
> flagged for a long time.
>
> - The motivation 10 years ago was to support customers that used Windows as
> their OS development environment, mostly for VxWorks.  Development under a
> 100% Windows environment seems a lot less common nowadays.  Virtual machines
> and Windows Subsystem for Linux also make it much easier to run Linux apps
> in a Windows development environment.  My company hasn't been distributing
> the MinGW binary for a number of years now as a data point.

Ah, I was going to investigate building a complete Windows U-Boot host
tools for VxWorks as well :-)

>
> - The feature set of some of the U-Boot tools has increased quite a bit
> which makes it non-trivial to support with MinGW.  For example mkimage links
> with libssl and libcrypto.
>
> I'm guessing more duct tape on the make system would be needed to get
> MinGW working, and my thought is that ugliness isn't worth the benefit
> anymore.
>

The reason I was looking at MinGW first is because I think we can
benefit from GitLab-CI to cross-build Windows host tools for us to
make sure it won't be broken any more in the future.

> I'm happy to gin up a patch if others agree and think removing
> MinGW support makes sense.
>

I agree. Let's drop the support. I will have to seek for other solutions.

Regards,
Bin