Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: <3C3C8DE4.580CF416@yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2002 13:37:24 -0500 From: Earnie Boyd Reply-To: CU List , MU List X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Soren Andersen CC: CU List , MU List Subject: Re: Potential problems with Cygwin GCC and -mno-cygwin switch References: <3C3C5F4A DOT 9F26F51A AT yahoo DOT com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Subject: Re: Potential problems with Cygwin GCC and -mno-cygwin switch > Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 17:29:14 -0500 > From: "Soren Andersen" > To: > > On 26 Dec 2001 at 20:33, Jon Leichter wrote: > > > I have a couple of issues to discuss about Cygwin GCC and it's MinGW > > support. > > > > Before I get started, I'd like to make an observation. The MinGW web site > > (http://www.mingw.org/mingwfaq.shtml#faq-usingwithcygwin) suggests that: > > > > 1) MinGW support in Cygwin GCC is flaky and buggy > > 2) MinGW support in Cygwin GCC will possibly be deprecated > I'll admit that these statements need to be restated. I don't remember if I or someone else made the statements but, these are flamitory and I apologize. Cygwin is a great tool, a lot of work has gone into it and continues to go into it on a daily basis. I certainly use it daily, I'd be lost without it. I've even contributed to Cygwin's GCC -mno-cygwin source so please don't take ill intent at these statements. > I have a few observations to make about this myself, on a general note. > First off I am not trying to dis anyone involved in minGW. Some readers may > realize I have been posting messages regarding minGW for a long while; I > use minGW as well as I can. And try to contribute to it although I am not a > talented or educated C programmer. > All contributions are gratefully reviewed. > Historically speaking, minGW is what must be (IMHO of course!) acknowledged > as a "parasitic" offshoot of "Cygwin-gnuwin32". That is -- and pls, all > readers, try not to react as if I had meant a very perjorative thing ^^^^^^^^^^^ pejorative > -- it > was a bit like the life-form known as mistletoe, which grows on a living > tree's branches, sinking its tissues into the host plant and drawing > sustainance from it, but is also a green plant on its own. Parasitic in a > semi-way. As time has passed minGW has tried in various ways to become > "self-hosting" -- very specific meaning to hackers, there, of course, but > also works in my metaphor here -- and moved away from complete reliance on > Cygwin and its bash environment and UNIX emulation. The way it has done > this has been a bit anarchical. Paul Sokolovsky has his "PW" scheme and > "Mikey" (if I recall right) has his approach, etc etc. In short, minGW has > been no where near as disciplined and organized as Cygwin. Lacking a single > corporate sponsor such as Cygwin has in RedHat, that shouldn't be too > surprising. > MinGW's history is documented at www.mingw.org and you've flamed it's originator's. > This lack of sponsorship maybe is also part of the noted tendency for minGW > priciple persons to manifest some, uhh, let's say testiness. You give no reference to prove what you say or to allow anyone to defend themselves. > People who > pioneer new areas and sink huge amounts of personal time and effort into > tough problem-solving with minimal broad-based outside interest or support > sometimes become as a result a bit, uh, proprietary in their feelings about > the project to which they've dedicated themselves. This can involve also a > certain lack of balanced perspective, inability to grasp the perspectives > of newcomers or outsiders, and -- sorry -- arrogance in attitude, > sometimes. I've seen all this from certain people involved in minGW. > Overall, though, its an amazing thing that minGW even exists, and has > accomplished as much as it as. > I don't know of whom you speak. > One thing that is pretty clear to me is that there is no one person, aside > maybe from Mumit Khan, who can legitimately present him/herself as > "speaking for" minGW. I think I just did, and have. > I think that needs to be acknowledged if there's been > some impression that "minGW is criticizing cygwin". minGW is first and > foremost a free-for-all, a collaborative exercize that moves forward by > fits and starts. In any such assemblage of personalities there are bound to > be some outspoken individuals (no sh__:-) who express frustrations they are > having in a way that isn't echoed by more silent participants. > Criticism, none intentional. Observation of problems mixing the environments is what's trying to be portrayed. Observation about what's been said about -mno-cygwin in the past in this list is what's trying to be portrayed. > > 3) a better solution for MinGW binaries from a Cygwin environment > > is to install MinGW GCC over Cygwin > > I personally keep the two absolutely separate in their own filesystem > trees. TTBOMK the win32API files in Cygwin lag a little behind those on > minGW -- maybe somebody can correct me on this -- and I prefer, lacking > expertise on many things, to try to maximize my good results by not mixing > the two to unknown side-effects. > I'll correct you on this. I release to both Cygwin and MinGW on the same day from the same set of sources new versions of w32api. There may be a few weeks of differences in the CVS versions between MinGW and Cygwin but those get merged eventually. > > From what I've seen, it looks like MinGW support in Cygwin GCC is up-to-date > > and better than ever before. So, I have no idea what the MinGW web site is > > referring to. Does anyone from Cygwin agree that MinGW support will be > > deprecated? > > I hope not. I am going to be studying the responses to this msg for the > next several days in an attempt to understand WHAT they are talking about > (argh). I gather that it is mostly about linker scripts which i have never > understood very well (and to tell the truth, hope i don't have to). > Be sure you research all the archives in all the lists including the MinGW list. I don't think it has to do anything at all with "linker scripts". > > I, personally, find it much better to build MinGW binaries with Cygwin GCC. > > In my work, I often build projects with shell scripts. Using the Cygwin bash > > shell is the easiest (if not, the only) way to interpret these shell > > scripts. Many times, shell scripts create symbolic links and specify them to > > compiler tools as parameters. Only a Cygwin binary can interpret these > > symbolic links. If a symbolic link were specified as a parameter to a MinGW > > compiler tool, it would fail. Thus, I fail to see how MinGW GCC over Cygwin > > is a better solution than MinGW support provided by Cygwin GCC. > > That makes sense to me. > > > While I do think Cygwin GCC currently does a great job of supporting MinGW, > > I do have a few issues with it: > {snip details} > > Hopefully this can all get resolved peacefully and harmoniously. The one > thing I hope is that the > collective attitudes at minGW never get to the point where people "over > there" (some of whom are also "people over here") have forgotten the debt > of appreciation they owe to cygwin, for being the historical predecessor > and "host" that allowed them to come into existence, if for nothing else. > Hopefully, this post has help toward that, Earnie. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/