Using gnustep with mingw/cygwin

[Oliver Langer]

Hello,

we are planing to use objective-c due to its dynamic features (especially
its messaging capabilities) within our project. The resulting system should
run an various Unix platforms as well as on Windows. I took a look into
several docs/faqs but i did not found some hints regarding one of my
following questions:

- what is likely to be "unstable" regarding the windows port of the
gnustep-base library?

- esp: 
  + we need to be able to operate on objc-messages - that is to be able to
    receive messages via "forwardInvocation:" in order to convert them (e.g.
    into related python- or corba-calls). Should this be stable?

  + What about dynamic loading via NSBundle under Windows? Should this work?

  + Did anyone of you use objective-c + gnustep-base + some win32-related
    stuff (e.g. COM-objects or other win32 sdk funtionality)? Did you
    encounter any limitations?


In order to try it out for myself i have attempted to compile and install
the base (and also make-lib etc.) lib. For this reason i've used the
  cygwin environment and
  the mingw-compiler
(latest version for both).


After installation, (statically) linking a simple example (using only NSLog)
via a makefile like: >>
  include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make

  TOOL_NAME = first
  first_OBJC_FILES = first.m

  include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/tool.make
<<
the mingw-gcc tells me that it can't find ("undef. ref") WinMain@16 (due to
the lib libmingw32.a which is also linked).
Do you have any suggestions?


Any hint would be very helpful - thanks in advance!


Best regards,
  Oliver