GSL for Windows with Visual Studio 2005

["Brian Gladman" <brg@gladman.plus.com>]

I have just updated my files for building GSL 1.9 using Visual Studio 2005 
here:

  http://fp.gladman.plus.com/computing/gnu_scientific_library.htm

to provide some improvements in the build processes.

The build project can build static libraries and DLLs for 32-bit and 64-bit 
versions of WIndows and all of the tests.  Sadly they do not work with 
Visual Studio Express (because of Microsoft's braindead decision to limit 
some facilities in Express) but I can offer built static libraries and DLLs 
for win32 that will allow GSL applications to be built with VC++ Express if 
anyone is willing to host them.

The only problem is with the Microsoft build (as far as I know) is with the 
file fft.c when optimisation is turned on (it is turned off in the build). 
Otherwise all the tests pass on all the GSl versions.

The build also works with the Intel compiler although in this case some of 
then tests fail for reasons that I have not yet tracked down (IEEE only 
fails on denormals).

It is worth noting that Windows DLLs and applications do not share the same 
FILE handles and this means that applications that attempt to pass FILE* 
parameters to GSL functions within DLLs will fail.  To overcome this problem 
I have added functions (e.g. gsl_fopen) to the Windows GSL DLLs that yield 
FILE* objects that GSL DLLs process correctly.

I would appreciate feedback from users, especially so, if anyone tracks down 
why some of the Intel projects fail (it's possible my function to set the 
floating point context for Windows is wrong).

My thanks to all contributors to GSL for a truly first class library.

   Brian Gladman