Re: Possibility of a MinGW version?

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Dec 24, 2005, 14:16 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0512241509240.24308@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <009701c60891$50893fd0$6900a8c0@sps>

Hi,

On Sat, 24 Dec 2005, Rob McDonald wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> > Is there some reason you can't install Cygwin, which effectively
> > overcomes both those problems?
> 
> I've had consistently lousy luck with Cygwin which has left a bad taste in
> my mouth.  Cygwin is generally a lot slower than Mingw, although that is
> most noticeable when you're making extensive use of math.h.  Also, it seems
> that every time I install some package in Cygwin, something else I've
> installed gets messed up.  It just seems to me that there isn't any reason
> for an efficient command-line tool like git to depend on a large
> unmaintained project like Cygwin.

Well, cygwin is everything but unmaintained. It's unfair to blaim the good work of the cygwin folks if you can't get it to work. I have *never* had a problem I could not solve with cygwin. In particular, *no* package got messed up when I installed/upgraded another package. Before you ask: I use cygwin extensively.

> Of course, one could use -mno-cygwin (or whatever it is) to use the MinGW
> headers when compiling in Cygwin as an intermediate step.  That would give
> any speed advantages.

As I already stated, there are two *big* showstoppers when it comes to port git to MinGW.

> However, I've had great luck porting Linux apps using the gcc toolchain to
> Windows using MinGW.  All these programs 'just worked'.

Okay, I'll bite. Could you please port python to MinGW?

> Thanks for the comments.  The best idea may be to just try it....

You're welcome. Just be sure to tackle the hard problems first, else you end up having wasted lots of valuable time for nothing.

Hth, Dscho