"MikkelFJ" <mikkelj-anti-spam / post1.dknet.dk> wrote in message
news:3bbb68f5$0$255$edfadb0f / dspool01.news.tele.dk...
>
>
> >of their libraries under Win32. Given the open source nature of the
> > project, mingw makes more sense than VC, though.
>
> That makes perfect sense, although I do not agree from a pragmatic point
of
> view.
>
> 1)  so used to having VC around that I don't really think about those who
> don't.
> But I think that most developers who don't have VC around also don't have
> Windows around - at least as a development environment.
> I for one would probably choose Linux the moment I settled for gcc.
> Why would I want to use gcc on Windows? The only reason I can think of is
> writing extensions to Ruby.
>
wrong here, for multiple reasons the first one being the price of VC, the
second
being the availability of windows there are many reasons to do it.
Also linux might be nice (I have it installed and appreciate it) but I'm
still find many
uses for windows including (but not exclusively) games, having the computer
used
by non experts (like a wife and a kid), office apps.
Also when I program at work, I have to do it on 4 flavours of unix and 2 of
windows
(working on CATIA a CADCAM program you may have heard of), therefore
although
we have VC my developments tools of choice are vim + our build system (which
uses
the Ms compiler on windows).  I use VC mostly for debugging.  But to the
opposite of
vim you can't script it in ruby.

> 2) The major issue is the object / linker format. Any compiler with a
> compatible linker format will do. I don't know gcc well enough to know if
it
> can support standard Windows (i.e. VC) object format. From what I have
heard
> it doesn't. I may just be a question of finding the proper compiler
switch.
> The free X86 assember NASM supports many object formats for many OS'es,
> incl. the std. windows format.
>
> 3) What does MinGW provide in terms of windows support? Microsoft has
> published a Win32 SDK which is intended for VC as well as other compilers
> such as Borlands. The SDK can be downloaded here
> http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/ In principle
this
> means VC is not required. I.e. the goal should be to support Ruby under
the
> platform SDK in standard linker format - not necessarily using VC.
>

here is a quote from the mingw web site www.mingw.org

<quote>
At the basic level, MinGW is a set of include files and import libraries
that allow a console-mode program to use Microsoft's standard C runtime
library MSVCRT.DLL (available on all NT systems, and on all stock Win9x
after the original Windows 95 release (for which it can be installed
separately)). Using this basic runtime, you can write console-mode ANSI
compliant programs using GCC and use some of the extensions offered by MS C
runtime, but cannot use the features provided by the Windows32 API. The next
critical piece is the w32api package, which is a set of includes and import
libraries to enable the use of Windows32 API, and combined with the basic
runtime, you (potentially) have full access to both the C Runtime (CRT) and
Windows32 API functionality. Please see the licensing information on the
various pieces.

</quote>

like it is said here although mingw is a set of tools it doesn't create a
runtime dependency,
just the build time one on the .h and .lib files.  So on the opposite to
cygwin this is not so
much as a tool to port unix apps but a tool to write win32app

Benoit