msys2 / msys2/msys2.github.io

An MSVC-compatible environment?

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Description

I don't know if it is suitable to open the issue here, but I would like to ask if the MSYS2 team interested in introducing an environment with MSVC ABI. There're some advantages with MSVC ABI:

  • Some commercial libraries only distributes with MSVC ABI. For example, CUDA. An MSVC-compatible environment could distribute the open-sources libraries with CUDA support (pytorch, maybe).
  • Many open-source libraries also assume MSVC as the compiler on Windows. Build scripts need less modifications to compile.
  • Many open-source libraries doesn't provide installers. Only vcpkg could handle them, but it costs a lot time and the compilation might fail. I think pacman is better than vcpkg.

The cc of such environment might be clang, or a wrapper of MSVC (a small executable, trying to find the real MSVC through vswhere.exe). The Windows SDK import libraries could be either the open-sourced one, or by searching the installed one in Program Files.

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No file, test, or entry point is named. Start by reviewing the requested MSVC ABI, compiler, Windows SDK, and pacman environment requirements; done would be a maintainer-approved feasibility and design direction for introducing such an environment.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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