Re: Win32 port status?

[Cameron Laird]

On Sun, May 07, 2006 at 04:31:11PM +0300, Jari Turkia wrote:
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> >Agreed - what about the mingw cross-compiled (or native mingw-win32) 
> >builds? I'm pretty sure any code changes required for VSE would apply 
> >similarly to these compilers, but is it too much effort to avoid the 
> >WinXP/SP2 tie in that comes with VSE (what about people who want to 
> >build on other MS platforms?)
> Personally, I am not familiar with mingw-win32. My initial thought was, 
> that a stand-alone .exe/.dll -package (MSVC) and Cygwin would do the 
> trick for most of us.
> 
> What does mingw do, or have to offer?
> >You are a star Jari - I'm looking forward to fresh Win32 binaries 
> >already :)
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Me, too; that is, I think it's great that you've taken the lead
in this work.

This is from the project Web site:
  MinGW ("Minimalistic GNU for Windows") refers to a set of runtime
  headers, used in building a compiler system based on the GNU GCC and
  binutils projects. It compiles and links code to be run on Win32
  platforms... providing C, C++ and Fortran compilers plus other related
  tools. If you see references to "mingw32" instead of "MinGW", they are
  referring to the same compiler system. The project's name changed from
  mingw32 to MinGW is to prevent the implication that MinGW will only
  works on 32 bit systems (as 64 and higher bit machines become more
  common, MinGW will evolve to work with them). MinGW uses the Microsoft
  runtime libraries, distributed with the Windows operating system.
  Unlike other ports of GCC to Windows, the runtime libraries are not
  distributed using Gnu's General Public License (GPL). You, therefore,
  do not have to distribute your source code with your programs unless,
  of course, you use a GPL library in your programs.
Among other things, it's a compiler targeted for Win* that runs on both
Windows and Unix.  Many of us use it for cross-compilation; we generate
Windows executables as part of a Linux-hosted automation.

When Microsoft's C compiler was licensed more restrictively, mingwin 
was also particularly appealing because it's available at no charge.

Does that explain mingwin?