AreaDetector, Compiling synApps modules for Windows Microsoft compiler

[Timothy Madden <tmadden@aps.anl.gov>]

Folks

I am making a soft IOC to run Mark River's area detector module (AD). AD 
requires several synApps modules to run. I have built EPICS 3-14-10 
successfully with the MS Windows compiler (.NET 2003). I ran into a 
problem with the make utility  when compiling the synApps modules.

For example, to compile gensub using the windows compiler I have to set 
EPICS_BASE in the RELEASE file to something. I can use a DOS style  path 
or a UNIX style path. If I set EPICS_BASE to D:/EPICS/base-3.14.10, the 
make system gives an error:



...RULES_TARGET:90 *** target pattern contains no '%'

This is due to the ':' in the DOS path. IN unix make land, the : is used 
to concatenate variables and is not recognized as part of a path.

If I set EPICS_BASE to a UNIX path, say, 
EPICS_BASE=/cygdrive/d/epics/base I get another error.
The problem here is that make is attempting to pass UNIX paths to the 
Microsoft compiler, cl. cl does not understand
UNIX paths as arguments.

I found a way to compile that seems to work OK.
This is in the top make file, say in gensub/1-6a.
TOP=/.
Put this in the top of the configure/RELEASE file:
EPICS_BASE=$(TOP)/../../../../base-3.14.10

Now we only use relative paths. IN this way we never have to use a : in 
the pathname, and both DOS and gnu make can
understand the paths.

I propose we change the Makefile Rules to include calls to
shell cygpath ....
cygpath can convert UNIX paths to DOS and vice versa

IN this way we can use
if HOST_ARCH= win32-x86
to conditionally call cygpath within the make system to convert to the 
proper paths.
This way we could would not even have to have a RELEASE.win32-x86 file. 
The make system would automatically convert
the path names to DOS or UNIX depending on which type of path is needed.

Tim Madden