It’s really a pity that this recent flame-like discussion chased you away, you absolutely didn’t deserve that, although, as you’re saying, your fuse might be a little short. It’s just too easy for emotions to escalate on the internet, which makes it so easy to start flaming (or getting annoyed, for that matter). In an offline discussion this likely wouldn’t have happened, or the moods would’ve cooled down more easily.

Anyway, I’d like to thank you for all your efforts and hope that you haven’t been chased away forever. Of course putting energy in other “projects” (whether involving programming or not) is always a good thing. Broadening your horizon generally is a good idea.

I know you’re no longer following the hugin-ptx group, but I think this one deserves your attention, since it’s just one “big thanks” post.

http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx/browse_thread/thread/ab8bd528dea4caac#

All the best,
Bart van Andel

Hugin, has become one of my favorite graphics programs. I’ve been using it long enough to be astonished at how far its come. Keep doing the impressive work you’ve been doing. I’m confident that the interest in streamlining Windows builds is high enough that someone will step up to help out. The community building and documentation work you’re already doing will help them with what they need. The true power of Open Source is that one person or company doesn’t have to do everything.

@Jas: Congratulations. How about improving the documentation with your build experience, so that the next one following in your steps will have a gentler learning curve?

I managed to try side by side Hugin and PTGui and for my needs Hugin win hands off.

I manages to build Hugin Win version from a scratch, but I’ve found a lot of troubles to make it work.

I’ve been using Hugin for some 5ish years now, and I’m really thankful for you contribution and dedication to the project!

I think that making the code build on MinGW and maintaining another build platform is less efficient than cleaning up the acts on the existing MSVC build and running it properly. Others may have different opinions.

Trying to support an additional (and redundant) build platform when there are not enough resources available to support the existing build makes no sense to me, unless there is a reason to ditch the MSVC build in favor of a MinGW build. You seem to be making the argument that cross-compiling is the reason.

I think that cross-compiling is less efficient than running the build process on a native system, which could be done in a Virtual Box. Both require a *nix user willing to go a very long extra-mile. It is not just getting the tools going: producing an installer for distribution is 20% build and 80% quality assurance.

AFAIK the MSVC build works well. It is only the documentation and the SDK that needs to be updated and maintained. It is more efficient IMHO to mentor an average Windows-Joe to do the job, hoping that he will maintain the documentation, update the SDK, and support the build. I started doing that on the Hugin-PTX with Joachim. Other Windows users seemed to follow too.

My personal opinion is that native building tools (i.e. MSVC for Windows and XCode for OSX) have a natural advantage. I am not inclined to use MinGW, neither on Windows nor for cross compiling, unless I have no alternative.

As-is, the Hugin code does not build on MinGW. A Windows user recently posted patches to make it work; and other users started looking at the cross-compiling avenue on *nix machines. I recently stopped reading the Hugin-PTX mailing list and I don’t know the status of their effort.

I have even less information about building Enblend with MinGW. Enblend v4.0 is not released yet. I was mentioning an Enblend pre-release 4.0 which I built on an Ubuntu and on a Windows box. The Windows build was with MSVC.

1. Is there any chance to have Hugin build on MinGW on windows? It should be easier to maintain for you and effective for the windows user, you could also compile fr windows on your *nix machine. I’ve managed to compile PostgreSQL and GIMP, two big projects, without any specific programming knowledge, this should be doable for Hugin too.

2. The same for Enblend? You posted about a v4.0 which is not available from the site.

Thanks and best regards

All very thought-provoking.