Re: [Elftoolchain-developers] port to Windows

[Antoine L. <ant...@gm...>]

Hi there!

I am brand new to this list, so I was not able to link properly to the
message I am answering; I beg your pardon for the annoyance.

On Feb. 26th, Joseph Koshy wrote:
> I would like to explore we could support a Win32-compatible port
> of the project in an ongoing way.  We have only done development on
> POSIX/unix-like operating systems till now.

Do not forget that the two things are not incompatible!
Cygwin and SUA (Interix) are two --distinct-- ways to provide
POSIX/unix-like environment using the Win32 binary format.

SUA is particularly interesting (IMNSHO) since while it uses PE-COFF as
"storage" format, the way it links to shared objects is much more alike
ELF than to Windows DLLs.
And of course SUA, previously Interix, born OpenNT, is a genuine POSIX
environment, with very few differences from *BSD.


> The first question I would have is whether it is possible to build &
> test Windows(R)-compatible binaries using open-source and freely
> available tools:

Wine (http://www.winehq.org/) could be an alternative which would allow
you to actually test produced binaries on FOSS.

> - Would a port to use the MingW cross-toolchain be similarly
>   compatible?

Many projects, including high-profile ones, are using that solution.
As Derek remarked, when it comes to plain C, Mingw, MS Visual C++, and
several other Win32 compilers are mostly interchangeable, with debug
formats a notable exception.


Antoine