X doesn't always mark the spot

I have added X11 proto and library packages for the Win32 (i686-w64-mingw32) cross-compiler stacks on both Cygwin and Fedora, as well as for the i686-Linux (i686-pc-linux-gnu) stack on Cygwin. This means that it is now possible to compile-test xserver patches for Linux, Cygwin, and MinGW at the same time from one platform.

Unfortunately, building X11 for Win64 (x86_64-w64-mingw32) is going to take more work. Win64 is unique among 64-bit platforms in being LLP64 (32-bit long, 64-bit long long, 64-bit pointers), which breaks the assumption throughout the X11 codebase that a pointer can be cast to a long (which works on other platforms, both 32- and 64-bit). The usual solution to this is intptr_t, but that is C99 and hard requirements thereon are generally avoided in the X11 codebase. Hence, solving this will require massive patching to the headers (possibly including the addition of a intptr_t-like type), and will need to be discussed thoroughly in advance by interested parties.

A Qt hat, isn't it?

Fedora users may have noticed that F16 ships with Qt 4.8-RC. While I'm not sure what the rush was, it did cause an interesting problem when it came to the cygwin-qt cross-compiling package.

Building anything based on Qt requires more than just headers and libraries; Qt's object system requires code to be processed by moc, which generates additional C++ code for signal/slot handling and the like. There is also a number of other tools which "compile" various types of data into C++ code. I had been relying on the native tools in qt-devel to do this, since the generated code is not arch-specific.

The problem here is that moc-generated code is very internal-specific; code generated with one version of Qt will not compile with headers from another version. Since the version of cygwin-qt needs to match that of the Cygwin (Ports) qt4 package, and I have no plans of updating that to 4.8 until its proven stable in conjunction with KDE, this created a bit of an impasse. There was another issue with relying on qt-devel, in that qmake requires patches to build libraries or plugins correctly on Cygwin, which limited cygwin-qt cross-compiling to CMake-based packages.

The solution to all this was to change the cygwin-qt-qmake package, which had previously just included qmake mkspecs, to provide native-built tools from the same version of Qt as cygwin-qt and with the necessary patches. While qmake/moc/rcc/uic are always statically linked with the necessary Qt code, the linguist, qdbus, and qt3support build tools are linked against the Qt libraries; for now, they are also statically linked with their Qt prerequisites.

The updated cygwin-qt and cygwin-qt-qmake are now available for Fedora 14 and up on both arches, along with an updated cygwin-filesystem to support these changes. Even better, thanks to a patched qmake, I was also able to add cygwin-qscintilla and cygwin-qwt packages.

Fedora Cygwin repos moved

I have updated the Fedora 14 Cygwin gcc to 4.5.3, and have added the toolchain packages built for F15 as well.

In order to properly support multiple RPM repositories, I had to relocate the Fedora Cygwin repos to Cygwin Ports' FTP area. You will need to manually update the release RPM (with 'rpm -U') followed by yum update in order to get the new packages.

Fedora Cygwin RPM repository

I have uploaded the first stages of the Fedora Cygwin RPM repository for Fedora 14 i686 and x86_64. I have added a release RPM which will allow installing the packages with Yum or the various PackageKit frontends. Any questions or issues with these packages should be directed to the cygwin-ports-general list for now.

Across and Back Again

As you may be aware, last summer I added cross-compiling support to cygport, resulting in a new 0.10 series. The results so far have been quite promising, with cygwin-based cross-toolchains now available for the following targets:

• MinGW (i686-pc-mingw32), with the basic packages available here pending an ITA, and many more in Ports
• MinGW-w64 (i686-w64-mingw32 and x86_64-w64-mingw32), already in the distro
• Linux x86 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) and x64 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
• Solaris 10 x86 (i386-pc-solaris2.10) and SPARC (sparc-sun-solaris2.10)
• Solaris 11 x86 (i386-pc-solaris2.11)
  
• AVR microcontrollers (avr)

With this improvement to cygport, cross-compiling from Cygwin comes with the ease you would expect from a Linux distribution.

This week, I decided it was time to turn things around and make it easier to cross-compile to Cygwin as well. To that end, I have created a minimal Linux-to-Cygwin cross-compiler toolchain for Fedora Linux. Under my "fedora-cygwin" (sub)project, I have posted .spec files and patches to SourceForge git and RPMs for both ix86 and x86_64 to the File Release area. For now it is necessary to manually download and install the RPMs until I have the chance to figure out how to setup a yum repository.

While these packages are mostly based on the work of the fedora-mingw project, there are important differences. I'll admit that these are my first RPM spec files, so I'll gladly take constructive suggestions for improvement, or better yet, git patches. Furthermore, these have yet to be tested beyond building themselves. If you do find these useful, or discover any problems, please let me know through the Cygwin Ports mailing list for now.