Re: [Gcl-devel] Building GCL and Maxima plotting - Windows

[Stephen Leake]

"Mike Thomas" <address@hidden> writes:

> > So it sounds as if both cygwin and mingw are active ongoing projects.
> 
> They sure are!  The MSYS fork of Cygwin is relatively new however and should
> not be confused with the Mingw32 tool chain, which it is designed to host.
> 
> 
> > Is there any reason to prefer one over the other with respect to gcl
> > in the long run?
> 
> MSYS overcomes a number of configuration difficulties which can occur when
> Mingw32 is hosted under Cygwin.  It is simply easier to use.
> 
> 
> >  Cygwin doesn't happen to emulate elf, does it?
> 
> No.   It provides a fairly comprehensive Posix development environment and
> emulation library.  As with all such animals, it is less efficient at
> run-time than native libraries because of the emulation baggage hence
> Mingw32.  Cygwin applications don't fit in very well with native Windows
> tools because they use Posix paths.  Because of this a Mingw GCL is a better
> long term solution for Windows users.

I agree that a MinGw32 GCL is the right solution for Windows users. 

However, my understanding is that Cygwin tools can produce MinGW32
executables; basically you pass -mno-cygwin to gcc. I have tried this
a couple times, and I ran into header conflicts, but it's supposed to
work. If we get that build process working, then we would not need
MSYS.

I'm more comfortable using the Cygwin tools in the long run, because
they are supported by a larger organization than MSYS, and used by
more people. For example, the installation process is simpler, because
they have more time and pressure to do that.

When I have time, I'll try to work on these build issues. But, real
work presses at the moment :(, and I have a working Maxima :).

-- 
-- Stephe