Re: autoconf in pure MSVC environment?

[John W. Eaton]

On  7-Sep-2004, Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden> wrote:

|  Programs linked with 
| the Cygwin DLL "mount" the Windows filesystems using different paths 
| (e.g. "/cygdrive/c")

My recollection is that an application can be written to mostly not
care whether the filenames are specified with Windows-style names or
Unix-style names.

| and if the mounts use Unix line termination 
| conventions (the default), text files are in Unix format rather than 
| MS-DOS format (i.e. can't be opened in Windows Notepad).

OK, this is potentially a real problem.  Is it possible to have my
application specify the way text files are opened even if the default
mount mode uses Unix line termination?

| Due to the 
| burden imposed on Windows users, Cygwin is best reserved for people 
| who want to use Unix under Windows.

?  I'm talking about an application that uses the Cygwin DLL and
perhaps some support programs.  To me, this does not seem much
different than an application that uses any other library that
provides an interface to the OS and a set of support programs (whether
POSIX-like or not).  The end user need never see any of this cruft.
It is all hidden from veiw.  Pay no attention to the man behind the
curtain.

| Programs built using the MinGW environment are normal Windows programs 
| so they don't come with any user-visible baggage, but must be written 
| to use the core Windows APIs (not nearly as difficult as it sounds 
| since there is stdio and underscore-prefixed calls for traditional 
| Unix APIs like open, close, read, & write).

Cygwin provides a nice wrapper that makes worrying about these details
unnecessary if you write software that uses standard POSIX interfaces.

| Of course most Window's 
| users will be extremely confused if the software does not come with a 
| GUI and show up in the Windows "Programs" menu.

That is a separate issue.

jwe

-- 
www.octave.org | www.che.wisc.edu/~jwe | Peace would shock and awe me.