[Coco] Preparing for a job which requires knowledge of C

[Mark McDougall]

KnudsenMJ at aol.com wrote:

> I use gcc on Linux to build X apps like UltiMusE. Is minGW something
> that allows X source to run under Windows, as cygwin is supposed to
> be?  That is, is minGW a good way to port a running Linux X app  to a
> Win PC? 

No. MinGW is 'minimalist gnu for windows" - gives you gcc with the WIN32 
API so that you can write windows applications using gcc. AFAIK the 
windows api is not quite 100% complete but good enough for most uses. Of 
course you also get the POSIX API so porting console-based stuff is easy.

If you want to port an X-Windows based app to a win PC, then you'd be 
looking at Cygwin/X (x.cygwin.com).

I tried this once as an exercise to get xtrs running on WinXP with 
excellent results - from go to whoa (including installing cygwin and 
cygwin/X) in about 45 mins. I was reasonably impressed.

Having said that, I've battled with cygwin in the past. For my 
particular purposes, I find minGW cleaner, smaller, faster and easier to 
manage (no cygwin.dll to cart around). Obviously cygwin is a must-have 
for certain applications, but I steer clear of it myself.

Regards,
Mark