Re: R: Version 3.18 of Lout now available

[Valeriy E. Ushakov]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 11:32:04AM +0100, Giovanni Zezza wrote:

> > BTW, recent lcc-win32, a free C compiler for win32, was able to
> 
> I did read the license, and wasn't able to understand whether it is
> actually "free" (surely not in the sense of FSF).

It costs $0, so who cares if you can get the sources.  All people
need, as far as Lout on win32 is concerned anyway, - is to be able to
compile Lout w/out shelling out big bucks for a commercial compiler.

To all: please, no further "free as in <mumble>" debates here.


> I don't know if then you can distribute such compiled Lout.

Yes, you can.


> It's possibly only a paranoic actitude of mine, but it would be
> better if Lout could be compiled easely with DJPP or other compilers
> having a clearer free license.

Don't you find it ironic that you are willing to reject a $0 compiler
out of the license snobbism while at the same time you are willing to
accept the infamous creation of The Evil From Redmond as the target
platform ;-) ;-) ;-)


On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 01:00:31PM +0000, Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:

> Why not use the Cygnus package? The advantage is that it is as Unix
> compatible as it can be.

Exactly because of this.  People who are sufficiently motivated to run
cygwin on their machines will have enough expertise and no problems
compiling Lout under cygwin.  Hmm, or will they?  Last time I checked
cygwin ftell() had severe brain damage about LF/CRLF line endings.
Last time I tried Lout compiled with cygwin - compiled as win32
application it worked, compiled as cygwin application - it didn't.  I
recall that was explained in the FAQ, but I lost the reference.
People interested in details can find them in list archives.


I figured I have no desire to figure this ftell brain death out and
extrapolated this to other potential users of win32 binaries.  Those
who want to use cygnus are welcome to try.  If you know how to handle
the ftell() issue, please report.  And using cygwin to compile lout in
non-cygwin mode doesn't make much sense to me, as I already can use a
native compiler.

I think that for all practical purposes we can consider cygwin and
win32 to be *different* platforms.


BTW, I've been reading palm.programming.gcc recently and I can see
problems and confusion that win32 people have with win32 port of
palm-gcc that uses cygwin.  The use of cygwin is probably justifiable
in the case of palm cross-gcc - porting to win32 would be a big
maintenance headache.  But Lout is specifically written in a very
portable ANSI C, so Unix compatibility is not an issue.  The *only*
Unix (posix) thing Lout needs is stat() - you can verify this with
TenDRA.

SY, Uwe
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