[AWS] Getting AWS to work without cygwin or MinGW on Windows XP

[Sam Colwell]

Alice,

As far as I know, Cygwin is only needed when compiling and installing 
the AWS libraries.  It is not needed at all after AWS has been compiled 
and installed.  Cygwin is also not required to run programs written 
using AWS.

I ran into a similar issue in a programming course I teach at Vermont 
Technical College.  Cygwin was not installed on the lab computers (and I 
did not have permissions to install it), but I wanted my students to be 
able to write programs using AWS.  I chose the following solution:

Install Cygwin on my development machine.
Unzip AWS source to C:\AWS_SRC
Configure AWS for a STATIC library.  * See notes below
Configure AWS to install at C:\AWS (not in the GNAT folders as shown in 
the configuration instructions)
Compile using Cygwin
Install to C:\AWS

I then made a zip file of the C:\AWS folder.  For my students to use 
this, they just unzip the folder to any location they want and set the 
ADA_PROJECT_PATH environment variable.  For example: if unzipped to 
C:\AWS on a new machine (that does not have cygwin), after setting 
ADA_PROJECT_PATH to C:\AWS\LIB\GNAT, I can compile projects using AWS by 
simply placing the line:

with "aws";

at the top of the project file.  Because I made a static library for the 
students, AWS is linked into their executable.  This means the students 
only need to copy their executable files to a new machine to run their 
software there.  The downside to static linking, of course, is that the 
executables are larger.

-Sam Colwell

Alice Barkstrom wrote:
> While I recognize that many applications of AWS need multiple platform
> capability, I'm interested in developing applications that only need to run
> on Windows XP or, later, on other versions of Windows.  Having to install
> cygwin and have potential customers or sales people opening up cygwin
> or some other shell gets in the way.
>
> It looks like the GNAT GPL with GPS is capable of simply including the
> directories with the ada code, compiling them all, and moving on from there.
> I've been successful in doing that with asis and xmlada.  The asis instructions
> for installation were quite helpful.  However, I've not been quite so 
> successful
> with AWS.
>
> There are two items that would be helpful and are missing from the 
> documentation:
> 1.  The AWS documentation should almost certainly note that it was written
> using cygwin - and that the command lines for installing
> AWS are done from inside cygwin.
> 2.  The asis installation procedure has a very helpful list of the 
> presumed directory
> structure.  Given the complexity of a full AWS installation that 
> needs ssl, asis,
> the windows socket library, as well as gnat, it becomes almost mandatory to
> have documentation of a standard test directory structure - 
> particularly if you're
> an individual developer and don't work with installations very 
> often.  I haven't used
> make for nearly a decade, for example.
>
> In order to work with GNAT GPL, the individual units need individual names.
> The current installation in config and with makefiles appears to 
> revise file names
> based on selecting the appropriate OS and then uses those distinct names
> (notably OS_Lib, although there may be others).  While I understand why that's
> being used in the current system, it would be helpful to have an example of
> how to create a working system entirely within the confines of Windows XP
> (or Linux).  The asis installation procedure appears to do this while 
> only changing
> a couple of files.
>
> If I can get this to work in the same way as I have with asis and 
> xmlada, I'll be
> glad to share the instructions with the AWS group.
>
> Bruce R. Barkstrom
> Asheville, NC, USA  28804
>
>
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