From: Jeff S. <jef...@ap...> - 2000-09-24 15:30:06
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Chris Telting wrote: > Now I don't want to ruffle any feathers. Lets just pretend > a new name was desired. > > What would be appropriate alternative names for the native > gcc, tools, and w32api libraries which we now refer to as > "mingw"? How about simply GCC on Win32? I never really understood what is special about this platform. To me, Mingw is a port of GCC and related tools to Win32, no more, no less. When GCC was ported to e.g. Solaris or AIX nobody assigned any special name that I am aware of. Mingw includes header files and stub libraries for Win32. This was the minimum necessary to make GCC usable since Microsoft does not provide platform headers and libraries under redistributable terms, as I understand it. Mingw isn't alone, there are other platforms that don't have a usable as/ld/libc that use equivalent tools from GNU. (Mingw is unusual perhaps in that it includes components that are not covered by the GPL.) The rest of the package consists of simple ports of GNU tools. I use Mingw because it allows me to use our favorite compiler when we target Win32, and the same cross-hosted build environment for Solaris, Linux and Win32. I realize there are others who may only want a first-rate compiler system for Win32, and don't necessarily care about portability, free software, or other goals of the GNU system. That said, the name "Mingw" is useful since a platform designation like i386-pc-win32 probably isn't feasible; there are too many such variants, e.g. Cygwin. Mingw needs a triple that distinguishes it from the others, and i386-pc-mingw seems just fine to me. Jeff |