Subject: Re: Porting Cygwin
From: Christopher Faylor <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 11:54:38 -0500

On Sat, Jan 06, 2001 at 08:36:57AM -0800, Tim Prince wrote:
>> Thanks, I'm on the list.
>>
>> Now, am I correct in my assumption that porting
>> the cygwin dll to WinCE will let me compile,
>> GCC source and the link/run it using the EVT
>> c compiler with not a whole lot of editing?
>>
>> If so, where can I find the makefile for the cygwin dll?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Dave Feustel
>
>Does CE support fork?  That has been missing from certain Windows
>variants. gcc usually has to be ported by starting with a cross build,
>using a working gcc, e.g. on linux.

Fork is actually missing from every version of Windows.  Or rather, the
POSIX layer on Windows NT supports it but cygwin doesn't use that.

Cygwin has always rolled its own version of fork.

Porting cygwin to Windows CE will be a nearly impossible task,
especially if you (Dave) are having problems just locating subscribing
to the mailing list and finding the Makefile.  This indicates to me that
you probably are not fully aware of the amount of effort required.

The subset of the Windows API that is available for Windows CE is not
sufficient to get cygwin working.  The biggest problem is that there is
no equivalent to the Windows console.

If you want to create a cross-compiler, that's certainly doable.  You
don't have to port cygwin to create a compiler that will generate
executables for Windows CE.  In fact, there is already support for
certain versions of Windows CE in the sources available in CVS on
sources.redhat.com.

Unfortunately, you need Microsoft's publicly available SDK in order to
build the toolchains and, later, to develop application programs.
You'll have to search around on the microsoft site for those.  They keep
moving things around for some reason.

Basically, unless you are either already familiar with building
toolchains and working with gcc, gas, binutils, ld, and gdb, you will be
needing to spend a large amount of time getting up to speed.  And, since
there is no cookbook for doing what you need, you'll have to rely on
trial-and-error and the vagaries of help from mailing lists.

cgf

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