Compiling Chicken app for Windows from linux with Docker

[Théo Cavignac]

Hi all,

After my previous mail concerning the static compilation in a Docker 
container I figured it would be nice to use the same idea to create a 
cross compilation environment for linux-to-windows dev.


Using the cross development article on the wiki, digging through the 
build system a bit and fiddling a lot I created a MinGW-w64 based 
environment that let you build standalone apps from your chicken code 
and your favorite eggs that can be distributed as a single binary 
without needing dev oriented dependencies like cygwin or MSYS2.

I have to say I am pretty happy with this achievement, even if it may 
not be much, because I learned a ton on the building system of Chicken, 
and on linking in general.

I plan on contributing to the wiki some of the knowledge I gathered 
during the process. I already submitted a ticket to fix what seems to be 
a typo in the Makefile.cross-linux-mingw file in chicken sources.

By the way, I don't think I have an account to edit the wiki. Can I have 
one with username lattay ?


Here is the Docker environment ready to be built: 
https://github.com/Lattay/chicken_docker/tree/main/mingw

Here is an image ready to go (because compiling chicken twice is pretty 
long): https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/lattay/chicken-mingw

The script that automate the process of spinning the container and 
extracting the final binary has been updated accordingly and now support 
the option `--platform mingw`: 
https://github.com/Lattay/chicken-build-static


Currently my testing of this environment is pretty limited. I did a test 
with the args egg but I don't know how well it would perform with more 
complex eggs like bind based one.

I don't have a non trivial app that would work on windows to test with 
this process.

Hence, I would be interested in some real world Windows ready app for this.

I would also be interested in feedback from testing this with your own app.

Also, I have yet to understand what is the difference between console 
and GUI app in windows and how this environment could be used to build 
graphical apps.


As always, I am very open to critiques and suggestions so please feel free !

Cheers,