Re: Upgrading our minimum required flex version for 8.5

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>
>
> Chuck McDevitt wrote:
>>
>> Flex 2.5.33 and bison 2.3 are available from mingw for windows.
>>
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/
>>
>> Since mingw programs don't need Cygwin installed, these should 
>> probably be OK for most Windows people.
>>
>> But if really needed, flex 2.5.33 could be ported (m4 is already 
>> ported).
>>
>> I'm also wonderings why flex is a problem, since there is a GNUwin32 
>> (native) port of Bison 2.4.1 and m4,
>> And Bison uses m4 these days, doesn't it?  Perhaps it wouldn't be so 
>> hard to update flex to use the same m4 calling that bison uses?
>>
>>
>>   
>
> It is part of the MSys utilities, and requires that you have MSys 
> installed. MSys is in effect a Cygwin equivalent. The flex from MinGW 
> will NOT run standalone. I have tried.
>
> If you think it can be ported to run standalone (i.e. without either 
> Cygwin or MSys), have at it. Or take my advice and don't waste time 
> trying.
>
>


What I have done is built a version of flex 2.5.35 with Cygwin, and 
bundled the .exe with the Cygwin DLL (the only other thing it should 
need, for our purposes) in a zip file. It can currently be fetched from 
<http://developer.postgresql.org/~adunstan/windows-flex-2.5.35.zip>. 
That way people won't have to do a full Cygwin or MSys install to use it.

cheers

andrew