Subject: Re: Why is cygwin.dll?
From: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)

17 Jan 1997 21:10:55 -0800
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
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Original-To: Ben Constable <[email-masked]>
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Ben Constable wrote:
> 
> > Maybe if you could get it ported to Visual C++, however when talking
> about
> > cygwin.dll, as mentioned in Jim Balter's reply to the same thread, if you
> > compile this on Visual C++ it would be using DOS's file system and
> syscalls
> > etc.. yet under cygwin.dll for file access it would need all the extra
> code
> > which cygwin.dll adds to mimic the  Unix subsystems. This would no doubt
> be
> > a rather large amount, and if just making something like grep by itself
> > mostly be unnecessary, assuming you just want want grep on win32.
> 
> You would not be using the DOS file system. You would be using the NT one.
> And you end uip using the same file system anyway, because cygwin.dll uses
> the NT file system and syscalls that visual C++ apps use.

The filesystem isn't relevant; it could be FAT or VFAT or NTFS or
whatever the system supports.  The point is the API.  And GNU
programs assume that names contain slashes, they make stat and uname
and link and symlink and readlink and whatever calls from the UNIX/GNU
API.  "grep" is not a good example because many of the programs
we are concerned with aren't just text filters and make use of UNIX/GNU
calls, not just stdio.  Sure any program that conforms to
the ANSI C standard can be compiled under Visual C++ or a host of other
compilers.  But most programs of interest do not.

> And I think your
> final point is the one that a lot of people want to make. A stand alone
> executable for a simple program would not break 100k, and would therefore
> be easier to give to somebody who did not have gnu-win32.

So

a) Use Microsoft C++ or any of the other compilers available under    
Windows

or

b) Use Colin Peters' minimalist configuration:
   http://www.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp/~colin/gcc.html

--
<J Q B>
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