Installing MinGW RTEMS Tools

[Chris Johns]

On 15/10/10 5:10 AM, Sam Lost wrote:
> I new to all this and I am having some problems installing the WIN32
> RTEMS Tools
> I have been following the documents listed below however after two day
> battling I am still stuck
> http://www.rtems.org/wiki/index.php/MinGW_Tools_for_Windows#MSYS_-_Base
> http://www.rtems.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_MinGW_RTEMS_Tools
> I notice that the link posted for MSYS - M4 is invalid, I have googled
> for it but without success.
> When I run rtems4.10-tools-1.exe I receive the following error when
> attempting to install rtems4.10-tools-1.exe
> MinGW Not Installed. Please install MinGW from http://www.mingw.org
> <http://www.mingw.org/>
> However
> # MinGW <http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-5.1.4.exe?download>
> # MSYS - Base <http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.10.exe?download>
> # MSYS - Developer Tool Kit
> <http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/msysDTK-1.0.1.exe?download>
>
> Are all installed, I have reinstalled and rebooted a number of times
> still no success
>
> # MSYS - M4 <http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/m4-1.4.7-MSYS.tar.bz2?download>
> Is not install for the reasons detailed above. Can anyone point me
> toward the MSYS - M4 update for WIN32:
> How can I overcome this error when installing the RTEMS tools for WIN32

The MinGW support has changed since these Wiki pages where written. The 
differences are:

1. Ralf builds the MinGW tools on Linux boxes. These are tar files and 
found under:

  http://www.rtems.org/ftp/pub/rtems/mingw32/

These are downloaded and unpacked into a directory. I am sorry but I do 
not have specific the details at hand.

2. MinGW and MSYS need to be installed. This is done with the mingw-get 
CLI installer. This is about the best page I have found so far but it is 
far from complete:

  http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started

This installer is rather green with a number of known issues how-ever if 
given the correct commands will download and install the needed parts. 
The MinGW web site is all over the place these days and it is hard to 
tell if the posts on pages contain more or better information that the 
original post. It is a little frustrating.

3. The RTEMS tools are built using the Fedora MinGW cross-compiler 
package. MinGW's runtime installation and this package uses different 
names for up stream packages resulting in DLL missing type errors when 
run. The one that effects us is zlib. You need to rename the package to 
get the compiler to run.

Once set up the tools work well and performance is pretty good (as far 
as I can tell with Windows running on VirtualBox).

I have not had the time in recent months to figure out all the issues 
and update the documentation. Sorry about this but unless it comes under 
a support contract with OAR it falls to whatever available time I have. 
I have been working on it and have working tools just no documentation 
has come out the other side.

Ralf and I have been discussing the whole MinGW issue in detail for a 
few months now and we seem to have reached an understanding of a path 
forward that best suites RTEMS's interests. We have decided RTEMS needs 
to create it own distribution for MinGW. This becomes a single package 
installed to provide the support needed by the tools Ralf builds. This 
is not something I can turn out in an afternoon so any interested 
parties wishing to help support this work should contact Joel or me.

Chris