From: Keith M. <kei...@us...> - 2008-10-06 23:04:31
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On Monday 06 October 2008 19:34:55 John Emmas wrote: > >> Brian - that's a very clear distinction which I found hugely > >> helpful. > > > > Even though it's a load of old codswallop? > > LOL - a bit harsh, maybe... Maybe, but I tire of refuting the false claim that MSYS is only for building MinGW apps. In fact, of the five or six machines I have MSYS installed on at work, only one also has MinGW, (and I don't often use it). On the others, I use it primarily with CVS and GNU troff, (groff), to maintain project documentation, or to manage code for a proprietary, (non-C), system; on one I even use it, along with Gordon Chaffee's port of `expect', to automate running a particularly irritating legacy MS-DOS application, (also proprietary), which runs for about 20 mins, and insists on pausing at intervals to prompt for user input, where 999 times out of 1000 I want it to simply run with its default responses, but it gives me no mechanism to tell it that up front. > :-) My main source of confusion was > over the level of POSIX support provided by the 2 different > approaches. Wikipedia seemed to suggest that there's no POSIX > support at all in MinGW whereas the MinGW home page says that POSIX > support is provided by MSYS. To be fair to Brian, I thought he > explained very well that neither MinGW nor MSYS extend that support > to user-compiled apps. He did, and I did agree that he got that bit right; it was his other statements, that I took issue with. > IMHO, this needs to be clarified in the > Wikipedia article which (at present) is inaccurate and confusing. Well, as I understand it, you have as much right as anyone else, to rectify that. > And for my own personal preference, I think it would be better to > clarify any inaccuracies in the Wikipedia entry, rather than just > direct people to the MinGW home page. Why on earth would you expect a Wikipedia article, over which we have no direct control, and for which we take no responsibility, to offer more authoritative information than *our* *own* web site? If it's pie in the sky you want, dream on... It simply isn't going to happen, if you expect anyone but yourself to take on the responsibility. Most people will more likely seek such information on our web site, than rely on non-authoritative sources. Regards, Keith. |