***BOGO*** Re: [Mingw-msys] cygwin vs msys and msys comments

[JonY <10walls@xxxxxxxxx>]

Caleb Cushing wrote:
> Don't want to start a flamewar just curious on what the technical differences 
> and how the project goals differ between cygwin and msys.
> 
Hi,
Cygwin attempts to emulate much of POSIX on Windows, the downside is all 
programs compiled to take advantage of cygwin features rely on 
cygwin1.dll. It has nice UNIX features though such as fork and UNIX 
sockets emulation.

MSYS is an old Cygwin fork containing a subset of UNIX support 
applications. Its primary use is to ease porting applications using UNIX 
style build system such as autotools while using MinGW tools to build 
it, a convenience for Win32 users. All programs will link to msvcrt.dll. 
One does not usually "compile for MSYS" unless developing for MSYS.

> By the way I really like msys. Any way you guys could make it a portable app? 
> as in http://portableapps.com . I think it would be fairly easy. Just need a 
> set user instead of detecting the user, and a few installer changes.
> 

I like portable apps too :). I too have MSYS on a USB flash, but I'm 
allergic to .exe installers.

There was a mention of portable MSYS quite a while ago, but I can't 
remember the link, sorry.

What I did was place 7-zip on the USB drive, then grab the .tar.bz2 
files for MSYS and MinGW from sourceforge such as msysCORE, MinGW 
runtime, binutils, gcc and various other utilities.

To use it, just unpack them to anywhere on the new computer and they 
will run fine. Do try to avoid placing MSYS and MinGW apps together though.

You can also unpack them unto your USB drive if you have the space on it 
and run it from there, you need only adjust fstab before starting MSYS.

For permanent user directory, you should be able to easily edit it to 
point to a permanent home directory even on new machines.

Its a bit of a hassle when you first start and somewhat steep for new users.

> also vim 5? does the vim 7 for windows work under msys? if not do you guys 
> think you could release a vim 7 installer? I really like the latest features 
> of vim (especially tabs).
> 
> 

There is vim 7.1 binary for MSYS on the sourceforge downloads. Its under 
MSYS Supplementary Tools. It has support for tabs too, but I would still 
consider it a console app rather than a GUI one.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
It's the best place to buy or sell services for
just about anything Open Source.
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace
_______________________________________________
Mingw-msys mailing list
Mingw-msys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mingw-msys