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Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 17:16:48 -0700
From: Edward Peschko <esp5 AT pge DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: merging mingw and cygwin
Message-ID: <20031011001648.GG2659@mdssirds.comp.pge.com>
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hey,

I've been playing around with mingw and cygwin, and was wondering why these were separate
projects? I've been trying to get a unix API moved over to windows; I want a Unix 
environment, but at the same time want to be able to make Win32 native binaries, 
*without* the need of the cygwin dlls.

So - I've been trying various things:

	1) cygwin
	2) mingw
	3) uwin
	4) mks toolkit

all of which are unsatisfactory in some way or another. #3 and #4 in particular are 
proprietary; and #3 and #4 both have less support in gnu tools than I care for. #3 looks
nice, but furthermore doesn't seem to be supported in at&t anymore..

However, #1 and #2 are a puzzle: why are they two separate projects? Its terribly 
confusing; both have the same executable files created (ln and rm, for example) so 
its hard to use one with the other; and its got to be a maintenance nightmare to 
support separate patches for mingw and separate patches for cygwin.

So - why aren't the two merged? Why isn't there a 'mingw' mode for cygwin, where 
the ability to use the cygwin*.dll is turned off, and mingw executables can be compiled
under cygwin tools? And where constructs like using shortcuts for symlinks are turned 
off, to make projects more win32 friendly...

I'd think that this would be easier in the long run. If the two projects were merged..
But then again, who am I to make such a decision.. ;-)

Interested in any comments.

Ed

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