Documentation on -mno-cygwin Accuracy

[Jesse Ziser]

On 2/7/2012 11:58 PM, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 07, 2012 at 05:14:59PM -0600, Jesse Ziser wrote:
>> On 2/7/2012 4:14 PM, carolus wrote:
>>> On 2/7/2012 3:12 PM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> There's the usual misconception about the GPL. If you create an
>>>> application which is linked against the Cygwin DLL (or any other GPLed
>>>> library), but you only use the application in-house, there's no reason
>>>> at all to distribute the source code to your collegues. If one of them
>>>> really wants it, he can always ask you, right? Only if you provide the
>>>> binaries to customers or to the world in some way, you are supposed to
>>>> provide the sources codes as well in a GPL-compatible way.
>>>>
>>>
>>> In a publication I have offered to furnish on request the source code
>>> and windows executable for a program that I personally run under cygwin.
>>> Don't I have to use mingw for the publicly distributed version, or else
>>> bundle the executable with cygwin source code? As I understand, simply
>>> providing a link to the cygwin web site does not satisfy the license.
>>
>> Well, if you don't want them to have to install Cygwin, then that's a
>> bigger issue than just licensing.  Think of Cygwin like an OS.  If you
>> want to create something that can run under Windows, not Cygwin, then
>> you have to build it for Windows, not Cygwin.  I don't know that it is
>> even possible to simply "bundle" Cygwin with your application.  Cygwin
>> isn't just some little collection of libraries or something.  It's a
>> whole system that must be correctly installed on someone's computer.
>
> Actually, you can easily bundle a program with the Cygwin DLL and have
> it work fine.  You don't need to install the whole system.  That doesn't
> mean it's a good idea, however, since your soon-to-be-out-of-date DLL
> could cause confusion with an existing Cygwin application.
>
>> If you really want Mingw (a free compiler and development environment
>> for Windows), maybe what you should do is just download and install
>> Mingw, and use that, instead of doing it through the Cygwin compiler
>> using a barely-supported option.  (Then you should get help with any
>> problems you have over at Mingw's website instead of here.)
>
> The MinGW cross-compiles are not "barely supported".  They are included
> in the distribution precisely so that people can build pure-windows
> programs under Cygwin.

Oh?  Then I got the wrong impression from the documentation and the 
mailing list when I was trying to work all that out a few years ago.  I 
can't find it now, but I could swear there was something about it being 
"deprecated" or "partially supported" or something.

-- 
+---------------------------+
| Jesse Ziser, Code Warrior |
| Applied Research Labs: UT |
+---------------------------+

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