On 2013-01-02 14:04, Stefano Lattarini wrote: > On 01/02/2013 02:01 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote: >> On 01/02/2013 02:58 AM, Daniel Herring wrote: >>> On Tue, 1 Jan 2013, Stefano Lattarini wrote: >>> >>>> OTOH, what about distribution "tarballs" in '.zip' format? They don't >>>> use tar at all ... Time to deprecate them maybe? Is anybody actually >>>> using them? And while at it, what about the even more obscure 'shar' >>>> format? >>> >>> While I haven't manipulated a shar file in years, but zip is still >>> the dominant archive format on MS platforms. >>> >> While this is absolutely true, my point is that it's not a format truly >> used or required for distribution tarballs. If you are going to compile >> an Automake-based package from source on MS Windows, you'll need either >> MinGW/MSYS or Cygwin, and AFAICS both those environment comes with >> working tar and gzip programs. >> >> Or is there something that I'm missing?
Yes, I believe quite a few projects have a separately maintained Visual Studio solution, seeded with handwritten config.h etc, meaning that they don't require Autotools to build from source on Windows. I can't give you an example off the top of my head though, but I think that e.g. ntp is like that (and I don't know if they also provide the source as a .zip-file...) Cheers, Peter
