Re: Compiling with MinGW

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

Tor Lillqvist <address@hidden> wrote:
> Bob Friesenhahn writes:
>  > Libtool does support using the MinGW compiler via Cygwin or 
>  > MSYS (I have only tried MSYS).  Both of these support Unix type paths 
>  > and automatically convert to Windows paths for MinGW.

> I don't think Cygwin does that to the same extent as MSYS. 

Of course not --- because it's designed to not have to do it all that
often.  Cygwin is designed as a drop-in replacement of the work
environment.  That's why it installs itself as a link to a
pre-configured command shell window, rather than just putting itself
on the global Windows PATH.

> Isn't that the exact reason why MSYS was developed (as a fork of
> Cygwin), to get automatic translation of Unix type paths passed on
> the command line or as environment variables to non-Cygwin/MSYS
> programs?

If that was indeed the reason, then my experience would indicate the
MSYS effort was a failure.  MSYS' ideas of which command line elements
are paths that need to be converted, and which are option names to be
left alone, are really quite strange.  I have quite some experience
using Unix-born in less-than-friendly environments (e.g. the pre-DJGPP
"GNUish" versions for DOS), yet MSYS still manages to make me cringe.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (address@hidden)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.