Subject: Re: About the gnu-win32 project goals
From: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)

22 Jan 1997 23:38:35 -0800
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Distribution: cygnus
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Original-To: Geoffrey Noer <[email-masked]>
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Geoffrey Noer wrote:
> 
> 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.

This is semantically confused.  My comment was about *dropping*
the unix emulation, not *separating* it.  Of course being able to build
executables that don't need cygwin is a good idea,
and can be done now with mingw32.  My comment was aimed at those
who think that doing the unix emulation *at all* is a bad idea,
is "poison", as one person put it.  So, emulating unix *is not*
a bad idea, even if forcing it upon people who don't need it is.

Hopefully we can get away from debates based solely on misusing
or misunderstanding simple language.

> 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
> [email-masked]

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