Re: RFA: Support Windows extended error numbers in safe_strerror

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 19:15:03 -0500
> From: Christopher Faylor <me@cgf.cx>
> 
> >But it isn't the same platform, anymore than MIPS/Linux and MIPS/Irix
> >are the same platform.  Cygwin requires a considerable amount of
> >additional software to be installed, of which a large part is a system
> >library that presents a very different API than the native OS.
> 
> The minimal amount of software required for gdb to run with cygwin is:
> gdb.exe, cygwin1.dll, cygiconv-2.dll, and cygncurses-8.dll .  You may
> potentially need to have the terminfo library installed, too, don't know
> for sure, and I'm not really interested in testing.  I wouldn't call
> that a considerable amount of software.

First, I think you need the shell as well (correct me if I'm wrong).

Second, running GDB alone is not useful.  People use the Cygwin build
of GDB to debug other Cygwin programs.  Just building those other
programs requires a more or less full Cygwin installation, including
the shell, Coreutils, Grep, Gawk, and whatsnot.

More importantly, what matters is that the software that makes your
system a Cygwin system modifies the OS interface in important ways, so
it can no longer be considered the same platform, IMO.

> You are apparently confusing the cygwin distribution with the cygwin
> DLL.  That's like conflating Fedora Core 5 with the linux kernel.

Please give me more credit than that, Chris.

> Also, there is nothing in cygwin which stops you from running native
> windows apps (e.g., a mingw version of gcc) if that is your
> preference.

Yes, there is.  But I'm sure you know that, so I won't elaborate.