Re: Tools under Windows

[Brian Dessent]

BRM wrote:

> I wouldn´t mind using Cygwin as the build environment.
> What I mind is having to have any dependancy from the
> Cygwin build environment come into my project. As much
> as I may like to, I can´t open source the project (not
> my call to do so), and my customers won´t install
> anything from Cygwin.

I don't see why you think that using Cygwin for the build environment
would necessarily cause a dependency to exist in the created code.  When
you use -mno-cygwin to Cygwin's gcc it will not search the Cygwin
lib/include dirs, so you don't have to worry about picking up a Cygwin
version of any libraries.

Something like

./configure --host=i686-pc-mingw32 --build=i686-pc-cygwin \
     CC="gcc -mno-cygwin" CXX="g++ -mno-cygwin"

...ought to do everything you need, providing that you have mingw copies
of all necessary libraries installed in the right places.

Or you could use MSYS, which in fact is just a very old forked version
of Cygwin.  The whole purpose of MSYS is to provide enough of a unix
environment to have fully functioning autoconf / libtool / automake
scripts, but it is still using the mingw compiler which causes no
runtime dependency on MSYS in the generated code.

So really in a way using Cygwin with -mno-cygwin and using MSYS are the
same conceptual thing.

To me this seems infinitely easier than trying to cobble stuff together
from standalone pieces and sacrificing a sane build environment.

Brian