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Re: [ITP] mingw-libjpeg, mingw-libpng, mingw-openssl
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:38:02AM -0500, Tacvek wrote:
>"Corinna Vinschen" wrote:
>>Charles said it all. Thanks for the offer, but MingW packages really
>>don't belong in the Cygwin distro, but in the MingW distro.
>
>I'm sorry, but on this one I must respectfully dissagree.
>
>While Cygwin is clearly a disto, i find mingw to be more a compilation
>target platform. MSYS is a distro, but I don't think mingw32 is.
Why don't we just stick with the definitions from the MinGW web site?
MinGW: A collection of freely available and freely distributable Windows
specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets
that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not rely on
any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs.
MSYS: A Minimal SYStem to provide POSIX/Bourne configure scripts the
ability to execute and create a Makefile used by make.
I guess it depends on what you consider a "distro" but it sure sounds like
MinGW encompasses the notion of including something like a libjpeg import
library.
OTOH, there is nothing in the description of MSYS which would suggest
that it is a distro. MSYS is just a repackaged cygwin fork anyway.
>As you probably know even Debian distributes some Mingw32 packages, as
>that is reasonable. Rember that cygming-special gcc's are dual target.
>One target is native, the other target is a cross-compilation target.
I don't know that and a search of the debian site for the word "mingw"
does not unearth any hits.
There was a less than half-hearted attempt to provide a debian windows
release based on either cygwin or mingw that has been doing nothing for
quite a few years, though. Hopefully this isn't what you are referring
to...
However, even if Debian actually does actually include mingw binaries,
we will just have to diverge in this case.
>Remember that a cross-compiled target may in fact run on the same
>machine it was built on, as in the case of compiling to the same
>platform but a different executable format.
>
>Cygwin includes what is basicly a cross-compiler, so it is reasonable
>to include a base set of libraries for the target platform. That said,
>it is also reasonable not to include tose libraries.
This argument has already been raised a few times previously. The fact
that you can use something to produce native windows binaries does not
mean that we want to start fleshing out the cygwin distribution with
native windows stuff. The -mno-cygwin capability in the cygwin release
is used to build components of the cygwin distribution which can't be
compiled using cygwin1.dll. If you really want support for native windows
you should be using the mingw compilers.
Anyway, this is not a subject for vote. I agree 100% with Corinna here.
We're not going to include mingw headers or libraries in the cygwin
distribution.
Perhaps this should be clarified on the setup.html web page? Lapo, if
you're reading this (since you're now the maintainer of this page, buwhahaha!)
would you be willing to come up with some words which explain this?
cgf