From:	noer AT cygnus DOT com (Geoffrey Noer)
Subject:	About the gnu-win32 project goals
22 Jan 1997 20:08:09 -0800 :
Approved:	cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com
Distribution:	cygnus
Message-ID:	<199701230127.RAA09061.cygnus.gnu-win32@beauty.cygnus.com>
Original-To:	jqb AT netcom DOT com (Jim Balter)
Original-Cc:	cjjohans AT cc DOT helsinki DOT fi, gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com
In-Reply-To:	<32E573FA.4144@netcom.com> from "Jim Balter" at Jan 21, 97 05:57:14 pm
X-Mailer:	ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
Original-Sender:	owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com

Jim Balter wrote:
[...]
> Frankly, those saying that emulating unix is a bad idea just don't know
> what they are talking about.  Without the unix emulation, there *are no*
> tools.  mingw32 cannot stand alone.
[...]

Put simply, the project has two ideal goals:

1) to make Unix code porting easy
2) to provide a free, high-quality Win32 compiler

As a company that makes much of its business from Unix-based
GNU tools, Cygnus has more inherent interest in the Unix emulation
layer.  Consequently it receives by far the most attention.
This is why the default setup right now is more friendly towards
the Unix porting folks than towards native Win32 programmers.

That said, there are quite a few reasons why we shouldn't force
the Unix emulation layer on people using the development tools
for native Win32 programming.  In this context, emulating Unix
is a bad idea, even if the tools themselves depend on it.
For now, mingw32 is the solution.  Ideally, I would like to see
this work sucked into the standard gnu-win32 distributions at some
point in the future.  So both goals are important.

-- 
Geoffrey Noer
noer AT cygnus DOT com
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