Re: Python recompile

On 10/03/2025 10:58, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

>
I think nobody does. There's always been some sort of mystique
surrounding 'gcc' on Windows.
>
'MinGW' supposedly 'Minimalist Gnu on Windows'. In that case I wouldn't
like to see the full-scale one..

 "Minimalist" is not about size of the compiler.  Rather, it is
about possible support routines.  For "hosted implementation" C
mandates presence of C library and there is a lot of functions
not in C standard, but included in libraries of C compilers.
There is also question of operating system support, complicated
by fact that Windows is different than other systems.  Cygwin
solved those issues by offering Posix emulation and a sizable
collection os libraries.  MinGW is minimalist in the sense
that it provides very little own libraries and mainly uses
what is provide by Windows.

I still don't get this stuff.
I get the impression that a port of gcc to Windows is not simply about building C programs, but building C programs that use a lot of features from Linux.
If so, then that's the wrong approach. There are various lesser compilers which know nothing about mingw or posix of anything of the sort. (For example, lccwin32, DMC, PellesC, I think Tiny C; I can't speak for MSVC.)

 To put it differenly, you could compile program in one computer
and get relatively small program which runs OK on different
Windows machines because libraries it needs are already present.
This is quite different compared to Cygwin, where you need to
install Cygwin libraries before normal Cygwin program can run
(I write about normal programs because actual compiler in
Cygwin and Mingw used to be the same and with some tweaks one
could use Cygwin compiler to produce MinGW execuatbles).
 

I'm not interested in whatever Cygwin or Mingw are about. If I were to use libraries not part of the OS, then it would be ones like SDL2 to get interesting things done. Not try and emulate bits of Linux that I'd never heard of.