building PETSc on Windows

[Lisandro Dalcin]

The Cygwin way works, but let me say that it is a bit of pain... as a
novice in this crapy environment, I've spent a lot of time just to get
all the Cygwin stuff properly installed...

I'm exploring the possibility of using an alternative, that is, using
stock Python for Windows + MinGW + MSYS. MSYS provides a minimal
UNIX-like shell and bundles development utilities like make. IMHO, it
is a much lighter approach to Cygwin... I believe the alternative is
possible... However, I have some issues that have to be addressed, and
I would need your help...

1) As I'm using the stock Python for Windows, the "select" module does
not work on pipes.. Then the machinery for executing things in the
shell and get stdout and stderr stuff needs to be reeimplemented... Do
not worry about this, I can take this.

2) BuildSystem assumes that the shell is '/bin/sh'... I would need it
to find "sh" in the $PATH instead...

3) When checking for make, BuildSystem uses 'strings' somewhere..
Again, I need strings to be searched in $PATH.


Can any of you try to fix (2) and (3) ? Anyway, that would be a good
change even for Unix-like systems, right?


-- 
Lisandro Dalcín
---------------
Centro Internacional de Métodos Computacionales en Ingeniería (CIMEC)
Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química (INTEC)
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)
PTLC - Güemes 3450, (3000) Santa Fe, Argentina
Tel/Fax: +54-(0)342-451.1594