Re: Remove MSVC scripts from the tree

Other than the documentation details and the business about
Gen_dummy_probes, which has been dealt with separately, this patch looks
solid to me.

On 12.10.23 07:23, Michael Paquier wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 05, 2023 at 09:38:51AM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> - I think we can't just delete install-windows.sgml. Some of that content
>> needs to be moved over to installation.sgml. As a simple example,
>> install-windows.sgml shows which MSVC versions are supported. That
>> information should surely be kept.
>
> I've been thinking about the whole structure for a bit, but with the
> MSVC scripts gone and the fact that we would rely on meson, moving
> this information to the section under the platform-specific notes is
> feeling kind of natural here. Here is a possible split of the
> information across several sections:
> - The requirements:
> -- ActiveState Perl could be entirely removed, IMO. Perhaps we should
> replace that to a reference to raspberry-perl, chocolatey or similar?
> I am not sure about the best approach here, so for now I've kept the
> bits about active perl.
> -- bison and flex, which would become hard requirements on Windows
> with Visual Studio now. Perhaps this could be unified with the patch
> for distprep later on, but here we have specifics for Windows.
> -- All the other optional requirements, tcl, etc.
> - MinGW notes.
> - Visual Studio notes, with the versions of visual supported, download
> links, and a bit more.
> - Notes specific about 64b builds.
>
> The attached is a bit crude and requires adjustments, but it shows the
> idea.

It's tricky. Eventually, we would like to reduce some of the
duplication, like the whole list of requirements. But there are some
Windows-specific details in there, so I don't know.

My suggestion would be:

Make a new <sect2 id="installation-notes-windows"> titled "Windows" at
the end of installation.sgml (after the Solaris section). Dump most of
the content from install-windows.sgml in there (except the stuff about
the old build system). Rename the existing section "MinGW/Native
Windows" to just "MinGW" and make some minor adjustments, similar to
your patch.

That way, we can move forward, and we can adjust and trim the details of
the documentation over time.