Workaround for cygwin's way of linking folders?

[Eliot Moss]

On 12/6/2020 6:45 PM, Ken Brown via Cygwin wrote:
> On 12/6/2020 5:41 PM, Johnathan Schneider via Cygwin wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm setting up a cross platform development environment using Cygwin. Upon attempting to use 
>> Cygwin's CMake that is natively bundled, I discovered that Cygwin goes looking for the gcc in 
>> /usr/bin/cc, a folder that does not exist according to windows. I have familiarized myself with 
>> the Cygwin way of organizing it's folders, seen here 
>> https://cygwin.com/faq.html#faq.using.shortcuts and 
>> https://cygwin.com/faq.html#faq.using.directory-structure and thus I know that Cygwin's /usr/bin 
>> folder is in fact /bin - according to windows, anyways. However, I'm not familiar with how to work 
>> around that on windows. In particular, virtually all of my IDEs' attempts to call CMake fail, 
>> because I proceed to ask it to call the gcc and windows, as is explained in the above FAQ's, does 
>> not recognize the Cygwin-way of referencing folders.
>>
>> Alas, my question - what is the recommended workaround?
> 
> It's hard to answer this question without knowing exactly what your IDE is doing.  Can you give a 
> detailed recipe for reproducing the problem without using an IDE?  In general, Cygwin's CMake should 
> have no problem executing /usr/bin/cc unless something is interfering with Cygwin's normal path 
> handling routines.

My guess: Your IDE is Windows based, and it is unlikely to play well with Cygwin.  It probably 
expects Windows paths, etc.  MinGW might gives Unix-like tools that work better for you, or you can 
find Windows based CMake, C compilers, etc.

With some effort, you _might_ get the IDEA to invoke the Cygwin program by giving the full Windows 
path to it, but /usr/bin/cc is going to expect Cygwin format paths, which a Windows based IDE won't 
know anything about ...

My guess could be wrong, of course!

Regards - Eliot Moss