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

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> > 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