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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: is Vax addressing sane today
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2024 15:49:32 +0200
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On 29/09/2024 14:34, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> schrieb:
>> On 29/09/2024 09:15, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>> Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> schrieb:
>>>> EricP <ThatWouldBeTelling@thevillage.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 13:13:02 -0400, EricP wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've always paid for mine.  My first C compiler came with the WinNT 3.5
>>>>>>> beta in 1992 for $99 and came with the development kit,
>>>>>>> editor, source code debugger, tools, documentation.
>>>>>>> A few hundred bucks is not going to hurt my business.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Given that GCC offers more features and generates better code than
>>>>>> MSVC, the money may not matter to your business, but the quality of
>>>>>> the product will.
>>>>>
>>>>> GCC is a compiler collection not a integrated development kit for Windows.
>>>>> I have no knowledge of what state GCC was in in 1992 but it likely
>>>>> did not support the MS enhancements for Win32 programming:
>>>>> structured exception handling, various ABI's, inline assembler,
>>>>> defined behavior for some of C's undefined behavior,
>>>>> later first-class-type support for 64-bit signed and unsigned integers,
>>>>> and most important:  integration with the GUI source code debugger.
>>>>>
>>>>> Plus come with necessary API headers, various link libraries and DLL's,
>>>>> supporting applications, documentation.
>>>>> You know... what a product looks like.
>>>>
>>>> I am currently in the position of needing to take some code
>>>> written for Linux/Unix and get it running in MS Windows.
>>>>
>>>> My attempts to use MSVC have been frustrating, because of some
>>>> limitations of that environment.  The two most prominent are
>>>> these:  long double is only 64 bits, and there are no integer
>>>> types of 128 bits that I could find.
>>>
>>> Depending on what you need to to, you can give MinGW-w64 a try.
>>> It works either as a cross-compiler from Linux or on Windows using
>>> msys2 or Cygwin.
>>>
>>> Personally, I like Cygwin best because it gives you access to the
>>> usual UNIX tools like make or emacs, and you can immediately run
>>> the executable.  I just add -static-libgfortran for Fortran code
>>> to avoid the hassle of distributing a DLL with it.
>>>
>>
>> Personally, I prefer msys2 because it gives you access to the usual *nix
>> tools like make - and does so far better than Cygwin.  (Here "better"
>> means more native-like file access, and more efficient usage.)  And you
>> don't get the DLL hell of Cygwin.
> 
> Just one remark - I was referring to running the mingw compiler
> under Cygwin, for which you don't get the DLL issues.

Ah, okay.

But you don't need Cygwin here.  You don't even need a msys2 
environment, unless you want to have things in the same place as on a 
*nix system or use programs that expect other files in those places. 
Almost all of the compilations I do under Windows (and most of those 
that I do under Linux) are cross-compilations, are cross-compilations. 
For Windows, those are mingw hosted gcc's.  And as long as things like 
make, cp, rm, sed, and a few other common utilities are on the path, 
they can be used fine without a full msys2 environment.  The same goes 
for other command-line utilities I use all the time like ssh, grep, 
less, etc.

The only call I've had for Cygwin is for building software with more 
complicated or old-fashioned styles, like big .config arrangements, or 
for code that needs more complete POSIX emulation.  I'm not sure I have 
used it since the days of building my own gcc 3 cross-compilers.