Re: [AD] updated fix.bat to simplify MSVC target

[guilt <karthikkumar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Should Allegro ship with a quickstart manual? :)

On Apr 2, 2005 6:26 PM, Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Newbies always seem to pick MSVC as their target, and have huge
> > > problems interpretating the current usage of fix.bat. I've seen many
> > > cases where the person's only problem is that he doesn't use
> > > --msvcpaths...
> >
> >
> > its documented in /docs/build/msvc.txt
> > all that needs to be done (unfortunetly constantly) is to tell newbies
> > to RTFM msvc.txt   poluting the makefile with every problem on a newbies
> > system isn't the role of the makefile.
> > well it kinda is, kinda is not...  just how far do we go, sometimes we
> > just need to say "rtfm msvc.txt"
> 
> I'm sure you'll agree that if we need to constantly tell people who have
> problems that they should RTFM we should consider that it's a sign that our
> build process needs to be simplified. At the very least, saying RTFM isn't
> too polite.
> 
> I agree with Matthew that --msvcpaths, or an equivalent thereof, should be
> on by default: it should not cause problems if it's on and not needed and
> it actually solves problems when it is needed. For problem cases where
> having it on causes the problem we would add a switch to disable it.
> 
> If I recall correctly (I don't have the message at hand at the moment)
> Matthew also had the fix script spit out a warning if MINGDIR isn't set or
> not set properly. This is also a good idea: the fix script could check for
> MINGDIR (and/or DJGPP) and give a warning if neither of those is set, as
> appropriate.
> We could probably even go further and detect wether or not make is called
> make or mingw32-make and tell the user which command to run. We can then
> tell people to just open a console window, run the fix script and follow
> on-screen instructions.
> 
> > i have been thinking about how to better help newbies, and part of the
> > problem is reading that  msvc.txt  its long, its very texty, its very
> > tedious, it seems to go on and on and on, for a newbie that often
> > doesn't understand the terminolgy/language/jargon, they are often
> > confused and scared by the volume of confusing text..  so some ideas i
> > had was to make a simple walk thru tutorial/guide, with plenty of screen
> > shots, and/or maybe a video MPEG that shows how its done, a small video
> > can be good for 2 reasons, it informs, and it removes much of the fear
> > newbies face when tackling the msvc.txt file, its less scary than
> > reading text, it seems interactive.
> 
> Personally, I don't think a video would be that useful at all. But if you
> feel that it is and want to contribute it you are of course welcome to do
> so.
> I think having some screenshots of which options to set and where in an IDE
> like Dev-C++ would be useful to have, but a video seems too much to me.
> 
> Evert
> 
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-- 
Karthik
http://guilt.bafsoft.net