Does libffi-sys-rs support Windows?

[yorickpeterse]

I'm currently trying to use libffi, and I would like to support windows. When building libffi-sys on x86_64 windows (either using GNU or MSVC), the output is as follows (full build output: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/YorickPeterse/inko/build/166/job/5p9n02e84nrwu3bu):

   Compiling libffi-sys v0.6.2
error: failed to run custom build command for `libffi-sys v0.6.2`
process didn't exit successfully: `C:\projects\inko\vm\target\debug\build\libffi-sys-cdc3debe8ea09211\build-script-build` (exit code: 101)
--- stderr
thread 'main' panicked at 'Generating configure: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "The system cannot find the file specified." }', libcore\result.rs:945:5
note: Run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` for a backtrace.
make: *** [Makefile:30: test] Error 101

The FFI README says the following for Windows (followed by some more notes for Windows):

It's also possible to build libffi on Windows platforms with Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler. In this case, use the msvcc.sh wrapper script during configuration like so:

path/to/configure CC=path/to/msvcc.sh CXX=path/to/msvcc.sh LD=link CPP="cl -nologo -EP"
For 64-bit Windows builds, use CC="path/to/msvcc.sh -m64" and CXX="path/to/msvcc.sh -m64". You may also need to specify --build appropriately.

The build script however doesn't seem to use anything, instead it just does the following:

libffi-sys-rs/build.rs

Lines 67 to 68 in d65c185

	run_command("Generating configure",
	Command::new("./autogen.sh").current_dir(&build_dir));

As such my question is simple: should I do anything else (or install any other dependencies besides the one mentioned in the README), or does libffi-sys-rs need to make some changes to support Windows?

[yorickpeterse]

I suppose it's also possible that the use of ./autogen.sh instead of autogen.sh trips up Windows.

[tov]

Sorry for the slow response—on vacation until today. I haven't tried libffi-sys on Windows, unfortunately, and I don't know what would be required to make it work.

What happens if you remove the "./"?

[yorickpeterse]

@tov I am in the process of setting up both Mac and Windows VMs for my project, so I'll try to mess around with libffy-sys-rs to see what is necessary to make it work.

[tov]

Great, do let me know what you discover. Thanks!

[yorickpeterse]

@tov I'm still working towards setting up a proper Windows VM. In the mean time, would it perhaps be an option for this repository to use AppVeyor to run tests on Windows? That way we could at least continuously test windows support. If you need a sample configuration file for a Rust project on AppVeyor, you can refer to the following one: https://gitlab.com/inko-lang/inko/blob/3d15c20e3be137ee3308f6389bd3365c9836e3b8/appveyor.yml

[tov]

Okay, thanks for the link! I set it up and it's running for the first time now.

[timfish]

I've created an experimental msvc build (#29).

You can try it out by patching like this:

[dependencies]
libffi = "0.9.0"

[patch.crates-io]
libffi-sys = { git = "https://github.com/timfish/libffi-sys-rs.git", branch = "msvc-0.9.0" }

[tov]

libffi-sys 0.9.1 now supports Windows. Thanks @timfish and @yorickpeterse!

[yorickpeterse]

@tov @timfish Thanks! I will take a look at these changes in the coming days to see how well it works.