[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#2705) building 1.14.0 for Cygwin part 1: the GTK+ 1.2 client

["Reinier Post via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ticket #2626 reports how a sufficiently complete Cygwin installation 
(1.3.17-1) allows the 1.14.0-beta3 Xaw client to compile.

The GTK+ 1.2 client can be compiled after installing the required 
libraries for Cygwin, linked to from the cygwin.com homepage:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/cygnome

They will install into /opt/gnome by default: with .dll extension
in bin/, wirl .dll.a, .a, and .la extensions in lib/.  For example,
I have files

  /opt/gnome/lib/libglib.a
  /opt/gnome/lib/libglib.la
  /opt/gnome/lib/libglib.dll.a
  /opt/gnome/bin/cygglib.dll

According to what I understand from the Cygwin documentation, it should 
be possible to link civclient against the libraries in /opt/gnome/lib.  
After long experimentation, I haven't managed to make this work.

Translated into ./configure terms, this means that neither --with-gtk-
prefix nor setting $GTK_CONFIG will suffice to produce a working 
civclient binary.  The GTK+ detection test will already fail, 
complaining that it can't run the resulting binary.

What does work is to add the directory/ies in which the GTK+ .dlls 
reside(s) to $PATH prior to installing and running civclient.  (By 
default, this will be the /opt/gnome/bin directory.)  This is not a 
clean solution, for these directories could contain garbage that 
interferes with correct compile time or runtime operation.

I'm not sure if the problem is on the Freeciv side, but the autoconf 
support for 1.14.0 should at least contain a workaround that improves 
testing.  THis workaround would use cygcheck to check the GTK+ test 
application (instead of executing it), attempt to locate and use the 
required .dlls on failure, and instruct the user to modify the $PATH 
appropriately if the .dlls are found.  I'll provide a patch.