[Gpg4win-devel] Fwd: packaging Free Software on Windows: Re: Microsoft CoApp

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On 04/14/2010 10:54 AM, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> For your information:  There is a new initative for providing a packaging
> system for Free Software on windows backed by Microsoft.

Actually it's backed by one developer at Microsoft, who says:
"Regardless, this isn't Microsoft's project--it's mine. They just happen to 
pay me to work on it."  This may actually be a good thing.

> In the long term this could be interesting for Gpg4win in the future.

The project has a very wide scope, similar in scope as the Debian project.

> It might be the time to now restate our requirements for such a system,
> including the mingw and cross compilation options.

One of the stated goals is:

"# Be Windows developer friendly. No forcing of building using ‘make’, but 
rather taking advantage of the nifty IDEs we already have. "

Well.  The project is big on standards (there is hardly anything in the web 
pages yet, but what is there are policies rather than implementation). 
Conforming to the standards as they are indicated at this early stage seems 
doable with some effort.  I doubt it is worth it, though: If the project 
succeeds, gpg4win will probably become obsolete.  If it doesn't succeeded, it 
doesn't help.

Thanks,
Marcus