Re: lynx-dev Win32 & SSL

[Benjamin C. W. Sittler]

On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Henry Nelson wrote:

> > If you can, please submit a patch for allowing cygwin compilation.

> Also, can someone educate me?  I downloaded what I thought was a whole
> "cygwin" package and installed it, but I couldn't figure out if it was
> a Win32 application or a whole new OS environment running on top of
> Windows or MSDOS.  In short, I couldn't figure out what to do with it
> once I had it.  Assuming I ever get it working, does the Lynx compiled
> with the cygwin compiler run from Windows95/NT just the same way as
> a Lynx built with Borland C for Windows, or do you first have to get
> into the cygwin environment, and then run Lynx as you would a "un*x"-
> built one?  Thanks.

Cygwin32 is not a whole new OS environment. At its heart lies a library
mapping many common UNIX-type calls to their Win32 equivalents. The
Cygnus GNU-Win32 software development toolkit has several pieces:

+ a dynamically-linked shared object (DLL) which supports much of the
usual UNIX API atop Win95 and WinNT.

+ a port of gcc which uses this library and generates applications which
use this library.

+ a port of many tools (including bash and make) which use this library.

There also exists a port of gcc (mingw32) which generates applications
which do not require this library.

Assuming the library is on your PATH, you should be able to run a Cygwin32
application as you would run any normal Win32 application (i.e. from
Explorer, File Manager, or CMD.EXE/COMMAND.COM.)

This means you can (for instance) place a shortcut to Lynx on your
Win95/WinNT desktop and use it by double-clicking.

To build Lynx I first started bash (the Bourne-again shell) because I 
prefer it to CMD.EXE and COMMAND.COM. This is not necessary, but if one
uses a different shell my build instructions may not apply.

(After installing the Cygnus GNU-Win32 software development toolkit, there
should be a Cygwin32 entry on the Start menu. Activating it should start
up bash.)