Re: MinGW vs. -mno-cygwin (Was: GCC 2.95.3-4 Problem)

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 11:39:09AM +0100, David Starks-Browning wrote:
>On Monday 11 Jun 01, Christopher Faylor writes:
>> >....  So what is the magic for building an application with the
>> >Cygwin port that can run on any Windows goober box without Cygwin?
>> 
>> The magic is called www.mingw.org.  This is the cygwin mailing list.
>> The -mno-cygwin option is added as a (regrettable) convenience for
>> people who want to build non-cygwin apps.  It basically produces
>> a mingw application.
>> 
>> If you are having a problem with -mno-cygwin then peruse the
>> mingw information.
>
>Apologies for not knowing more about the technical details here.  But
>refering -mno-cygwin users to www.mingw.org conflicts with what's
>currently written in the FAQ, which emphasizes that they are separate:
>
>Q.  How do I compile a Win32 executable that doesn't use Cygwin?
>
>A.  The -mno-cygwin flag to gcc makes gcc link against standard
>    Microsoft DLLs instead of Cygwin. This is desirable for native
>    Windows programs that don't need a UNIX emulation layer.
>
>    This is not to be confused with 'MinGW' (Minimalist GNU for
>    Windows), which is a completely separate effort. That project's
>    home page is http://www.mingw.org/index.shtml.
>
>Should the second paragraph be revised to say that -mno-cygwin
>effectively produces a MinGW app, and users should refer to that
>project?  I understand they are not *exactly* the same (right?) so
>maybe I can point that out, too.

IMO, yes.  They are not exactly the same but they should be very
very close.

It is a sticky problem because we don't include a mingw C++ library
(despite my frequent begging) in cygwin, so some errors that people will
experience are actually cygwin specific and shouldn't pollute the
mingw mailing list.

However, the specific problem that this person was not due to anything
like this.  It was a pure windows problem, as far as I could tell.

So, probably the FAQ should suggest that -mno-cygwin uses a
subset of the functionality found at www.mingw.org.  Before people
report problems with -mno-cygwin they should 1) check the cygwin
mailing list archives and 2) check the mingw web site.  Also, adding
words about the libstdc++.a library might help.

cgf

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