Hello Tim,

sorry for pestering your private account with a copy, but I guess you
stopped looking for this reply on the list by now :-))

TR> This _ought_ to be doable by reading the relevant swiki pages so please try it
TR> that way and please make notes about what isn't explained etc so we can improve
TR> the doc. Only by outside reviewers providing feedback can it get better.

I've read things on the swiki and everything seemed simple. Today I
found a little time to give it a try. Actually I made it within one
and a half hours. This is what took the time:

1: I use Borland Delphi and the batch started to call their
make tool. I was lucky they use "Borland make" in their error message.
If the message only said "make error ...." this could have taken long.

So maybe it's worth a hint in "Compiling squeak on windows" that while
setting the path, one should be looking for the paths of other
development packages which might bring their own make tool earlier in
the path.

2: as I am unafraid to mangle my Win98 installation I gave it a
try there. "makefile.mingw32" is not recognised there, so one either
has to change the extension of the file and the build.bat or use
another windows. I choose to use XP.

3: If there where a hint that when renaming the "y.y.z" path extracted
from the Sources zip to "platforms" and installing it in the directory
of squeak the vmmakertool would find it automatically.

4: You really must start the build.bat from a dos-box, if you do so
from explorer or my computer you will end up with an error message.

There also where a few irritations with the vmmaker tool. I started
reading the help behind the help button and it seemed to say the path
would be searched by the tool. At least I read it that way. The
balloon help is more clear.

The "clean out" button seems to do nothing.

"Generate all" seems to know that nothing has changed in the sources
so it will only do the copying. Especially after "clean out" I
expected a full generation of code. For me it seems that I have to
delete the platforms tree, reinstall the sources and start over in
Squeak to be sure to get a clean build.

All in all it is a great tool with a great GUI but to the newbie (me
at least) the GUI leaves an ambigous feeling about what it does in
which situation.

When I have time again I will look for the file copy utility and try a
port for Windows.

I will add my points 1 to 4 to the swiki but before doing that I'll
wait for comments here or if the creator of the page wants to add
these in digested form.


Best regards,

Herbert                            mailto:herbertkoenig at gmx.net