On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Andrew Coppin <andrewcop...@btinternet.com>wrote:
> > And I have no problem with needing to install a Haskell compiler. If I had > to install a seperate C compiler to make FFI to C work, that wouldn't seem > unreasonable either. (As it happens, GHC has a C backend, so the C compiler > just happens to be there already.) What does seem very weird is having to > turn my Windows box into a psuedo-Unix system in order to write native > Windows programs. > > <snip> > > You can't develop anything with just what's preinstalled. (Well, unless you > could writing batch scripts...) > > Generally, if you want to develop C or C++ applications on Windows, you > install MS Visual Studio. It gives you the compiler, linker, dependency > management, and a whole bunch of other stuff. You typically wouldn't install > gcc, ld and Automake. (Unless of course you were specifically trying to port > existing Unix code, obviously.) > > It helps, I believe, if you stop thinking of MinGW with MSYS as 'a pseudo-Unix system'. They're billed as the minimal toolset required on windows to use the GNU compilers and build system (and, as everybody knows, Gnu's not Unix). The great thing about these compilers is that they're cross-platform and freely available, unlike MS Visual Studio. I think that it makes sense that open source software developers targeting multiple platforms would want to pick a tool suite that works across all those platforms, and the GNU tools fit that description. Cygwin truly is a Unix emulation, but MinGW/MSYS is just a packaging of useful open source (GNU) tools for Windows (including a shell). Many programs that work well as native Windows apps, such as the GIMP, are built with them.
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