Re: UnxUtils, Unix tools on Win32

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Leeuwesteijn,Joost" <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 14:43:36 +0200
> 
> Seems to be more active than UnxUtils at least :-) I did see that packages
> have a dependency.zip file, containing some required DLL's. Language and
> encoding functionality. Not sure why you'd need that, or if it can be
> disabled. Probably not without rebuilding...

The *-dep.zip includes DLLs that are shared by all GnuWin32 ports.
Those DLLs are native Windows DLLs, so that's not mini-Cygwin in
disguise.  They just conserve disk space and memory.

You are right that most (but not all) of the DLLs are required for NLS
support (the messages printed by the programs are in your locale's
language), but I'd imagine your users will want that feature.

> > Sometimes the GnuWin32 pre-built binaries have bugs, in which case I
> > download the sources, build them myself and debug the problem.  That
> > is, if reporting the bug to the GnuWin32 bug-tracker doesn't get
> > responded quickly enough.
> 
> You're using MSYS + MinGW to compile the GnuWin32 tools? Or CygWin+MinGW? Or
> something else?

You don't need the full MSYS environment to rebuild the tools, unless
you make really deep changes.  The source distributions already
include Makefile and config.h files produced by running the configure
script, so at most you will need to edit the Makefile slightly and run
Make.  The only thing you will need is some port of a Unixy shell.

> What are the differences between MSYS and CygWin, apart from the
> modifications mentioned earlier?

Earnie is a better person than myself to explain those differences.
FWIW, I have neither Cygwin nor MSYS installed on my system.

> In the end, it's just plain awful...all the tricks and hacks just to get a
> working system on Win32 ;-)

Welcome to the world of Free Software ;-)

> Slash backslash, quote double quote, C:, cmd bash, colon semi
> colon...it's giving me the creeps :-)

If they give you too many creeps, you can always install GNU/Linux.