From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) Subject: Re: About the gnu-win32 project goals 22 Jan 1997 23:38:35 -0800 Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <32E6C3DB.65D1.cygnus.gnu-win32@netcom.com> References: <199701230127.RAA09061@beauty.cygnus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I) Original-To: Geoffrey Noer Original-CC: gnu-win32@cygnus.com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com Geoffrey Noer wrote: > > Jim Balter wrote: > [...] > > Frankly, those saying that emulating unix is a bad idea just don't know > > what they are talking about. Without the unix emulation, there *are no* > > tools. mingw32 cannot stand alone. > [...] > > Put simply, the project has two ideal goals: > > 1) to make Unix code porting easy > 2) to provide a free, high-quality Win32 compiler > > As a company that makes much of its business from Unix-based > GNU tools, Cygnus has more inherent interest in the Unix emulation > layer. Consequently it receives by far the most attention. > This is why the default setup right now is more friendly towards > the Unix porting folks than towards native Win32 programmers. > > That said, there are quite a few reasons why we shouldn't force > the Unix emulation layer on people using the development tools > for native Win32 programming. In this context, emulating Unix > is a bad idea, even if the tools themselves depend on it. This is semantically confused. My comment was about *dropping* the unix emulation, not *separating* it. Of course being able to build executables that don't need cygwin is a good idea, and can be done now with mingw32. My comment was aimed at those who think that doing the unix emulation *at all* is a bad idea, is "poison", as one person put it. So, emulating unix *is not* a bad idea, even if forcing it upon people who don't need it is. Hopefully we can get away from debates based solely on misusing or misunderstanding simple language. > For now, mingw32 is the solution. Ideally, I would like to see > this work sucked into the standard gnu-win32 distributions at some > point in the future. So both goals are important. > > -- > Geoffrey Noer > noer@cygnus.com -- - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".