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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: is Vax addressing sane today
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 14:07:47 +0200
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On 29/09/2024 21:30, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> schrieb:
>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>
>>> Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> schrieb:
>> [...]
>>>> 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.
>>
>> Thank you for these suggestions.  I have started to explore
>> mingw but not yet the others.  Is there a difference between
>> mingw and mingw-w64, do you know?
> 
> One is a fork of the other, I believe.
> 

mingw-w64 was started as a fork of mingw, initially created to support 
generating 64-bit binaries and because of disagreements with the pace of 
development in mingw.


>> Also do you know if mingw
>> is compatible with MSVC, as long as long double is not used?
> 
> I believe that Mingw-w64 uses the Windows ABI, but that is a
> belief, not something I know first-hand; I haven't looked
> at the assembly.

There is a reasonably defined ABI for 64-bit Windows, so I think there 
will be compatibility for most things in C.  C++ is more complicated and 
much more likely to have incompatibilities.

There are approximately a hundred and one different C ABI's and calling 
conventions for 32-bit Windows, since MS never actually defined one, so 
things are a bit of a mess there.  (DLL calling conventions are clearer.)

I believe the two most popular ways of running "Linux-like" software and 
gcc on Windows are using WSL (which is more of a virtualisation layer), 
and mingw-64 for the compiler target (with either gcc or clang) and 
msys2 as an environment and source of *nix utilities and libraries. 
mingw/msys is considered old and limited (32-bit only), while Cygwin is 
considered slow and clunky by many.

At least, that is my understanding.