Subject: Re: Cygwin NT DDK Project
From: "Chris Telting" <[email-masked]>
To: "Emanuele Aliberti" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 16:40:18 -0700

----- Original Message -----
From: Emanuele Aliberti <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 12:41 PM
Subject: Re: Cygwin NT DDK Project

> >In short: CygWin is a (_GREAT_) porting tool, with MinGW a very good
> >target for "usual" applications. Using it for driver purposes looks to
me,
> >at this stage, a waste of time; full support for all the available user
> >mode APIs would be a much more useful project.
>
> I use the Cygwin's little child: mingw32. Ld can build native applications
> (*) and, since kernel mode drivers are native DLLs, it probably can build
> them too. Unfortunately, as Mumit confirmed prevately, gcc can not handle
> the __fastcall calling convention which is required to call some
frequently
> used system calls from kernel mode, so it is not complete yet for a free
WNT
> DDK.

That's all that's needed?  It only requires a keyword and code to generate
the fastcalls which is minimal.  Even I can do that.  If that's what's
needed then
I volunteer to do it myself.  I also know as a fact that the linker needs to
be
changed.

There actually needs to be a flag set in the pe header in order for it to be
a
valid but again that's minimal.

Does anyone actually want this?  I figured that it would be minimal to
implement if it weren't already implemented.  I personally think that the
gnu tools would be a superior build environment than currently exists
with the NT DDK.

And I'd personally like to see a free nt fs kit; at a minimal all the
required
include headers and import libraries.  Possibly minimal documentation
of what people have so far figured out indipendently about making such
drivers.

<PONDERING>
On a seperate issue.  I was posdering the possibility of a virtual
 subsystem for nt drivers for linux.  Mostly the mini drivers such as
printers
and possibly video.  While it wouldn't be as good as native drivers; still
slow drivers are better than no drivers.  Anyone see any problems with
this?  It's certianly is alot of work but can anyone suggest as fundimental
or legal reasons why it wouldn't be possible?
</PONDERING>

BlueCoder
[email-masked]
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

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