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Re: How to link with third party libraries using gcc

by km4hr :: Rate this Message:

Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:

km4hr wrote:
> Well, I think I'm about at the end of my road. My purpose for trying cygwin
> was to see if it could insulate me from having to learn to program on
> Windows. But if I've got to go to MSNBC (or whatever) or google the internet
> to figure out the internals of Windows then that defeats my purpose. I'm
> too close to the end of my career for that. I have no interest in Windows
> anyway.
>
> I am amazed at what the Cygwin programmers have accomplished. They're
> obviously very capable programmers. But if I have to learn Windows to use
> cygwin then what's the use? I might as well just learn the Windows
> programming tools. They're easy to use, or so I'm told.
>
> I am glad cygwin enables me to run "vi" on Windows. That alone is very
> useful. The Unix utilities are nice too!
>
> Thanks for your suggestions.

I'm glad you found it useful.

I think you're proceeding from a false assumption about Cygwin though.
Cygwin is an emulation layer that will insulate your from much of the
differences between Windows and Linux if you work entirely within it's
confines. It will insulate you somewhat if you straddle the line between
Cygwin and Windows. You're in the camp of the latter because you're working
with a lib created on Windows for Windows by Windows tools. If that's
a problem for you, you have the option of building the library from
source using Cygwin. Then you will have none of the problems you were
noticing. I expect that's not of interest (or possible) to you either
but I thought it worthwhile to point out. You're still getting allot
of insulation, no matter how you look at it though. You don't have
to learn the Win32 API or anything. :-)

I agree, Cygwin is certainly useful in many ways. The developers have done the rest of us a huge service.
After re-reading my previous post I felt I may have come down too hard on Cygwin. I didn't mean to do that.

The programming I do is relatively simple. But I appreciate the complexities involved in getting Windows and Unix to virtually live together on the same computer. I have no idea how cygwin does that. But with all the complex obstacles that the cygwin developers have obviously overcome it's puzzling to me why something as seemingly ordinary as Windows libraries is so mystifying. In just this one series of messages I've been told the instructions in the cygwin user's guide make no sense. Then I'm offered several opinions about what I should do. It makes me wonder how Windows' own programming tools are able to link with their own libraries if the standards are so vague and haphazard. I guess I'll just add one more entry to the list of things I can't comprehend about Windows. I'm ok with that because I don't care about Windows anyway.

Thanks again from enlightening me.

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