From: Don P. <do...@ma...> - 2000-09-22 07:55:56
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I would like to vote no to the concept of bundling an IDE with mingw or selecting an "official" one. I very much like a strong and powerful set of functions in a command line interface. The "Minimalist" part of mingw is important. I strongly agree with Greg's point four below. -----Original Message----- From: min...@li... [mailto:min...@li...]On Behalf Of Greg Chicares Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 5:25 PM To: min...@li... Subject: Re: [Mingw-users] new release?? Paul Sokolovsky wrote: > > As for releases, I think it's shame that most stable mingw32 build > of entire history spends long time in "beta snapshot" status. My idea > is simply re-release it with latest mingw runtime available > (2000-03-xx vs 2000-02-xx). Since even that won't happen tomorrow, my > binutils build might also fit there. But even first of all that, we > should decide of packaging and installation conventions. I personally > interested in having it in modularized (gcc/runtime/binutils separate) > downloads (and uploads too ;-) ), still, most people will prefer > all-in-one distro. I even think we should select "official" IDE for > mingw and provide that off the site, too. I agree with everything you say except the last sentence. A good IDE is important to many people; makefiles can be difficult for people who have never used them before. Right now, the FAQ gives pointers to a number of IDEs, and the message to a newcomer seems to be: download a bunch of these, try them out, and use what you like. It would be ideal if we had a really great IDE to point people to. But these are the problems I see: 1. I haven't yet seen a great IDE, although I have tried several. In particular, I have not spent enough time with Source Navigator to have formed an opinion of it. But the ones I've tried are not yet mature enough for universal use in my personal opinion. 2. An official IDE will determine the first impressions new users form of the entire mingw toolset. The IDEs I've tried are not as robust and easy to use as the commercial packages of five years ago in my personal opinion. But I feel the mingw command line tools are as good as any, and it is better to compete on mingw's (gnu's) strong points. 3. Today, several IDEs compete, but none dominates. It would be better to let a victor emerge by natural selection. Declaring a winner now could inhibit competition. In contrast, gdb is clearly the debugger of choice and should be official. 4. It's important to remain part of the gnu world. If mingw users are encouraged to learn, say, to check or uncheck Compiler | Options | Nested Comments but not to learn that it means '-Wcomment', then they will have a difficult time communicating with other gcc users. _______________________________________________ MinGW-users mailing list Min...@li... You may change your MinGW Account Options at: http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/mingw-users |