> - I tried Mingw's MSYS now; it suffers from the problems similar to > cygwin's: needs to be installed and needs a DLL.
MSYS is a collection of mingw apps along with a shell; it encompasses several features including file name munging, above what a simple mingw application normally does. Using mingw does not require using MSYS. But complaints about MSYS or mingw are better directed at their mailing list, rather than here. > > - Why shouldn't coreutils accept native win32 ports? Because the GNU Coding Standards do not require bending backwards to support proprietary systems. It is counterproductive to our philosophy to add #ifdefs all over the portable code just for one non-free platform that does not believe in following standards. http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Compatibility.html#Compatibility http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Ethical-and-Philosophical-Consideration > GNU make does. Only because someone volunteers to maintain it. > I think > native win32 support should be an objective of the project; And you are entitled to that opinion. However, Jim, as the primary maintainer, is of the contrary opinion that upstream coreutils is easier to maintain if it sticks to non-proprietary, portable APIs, and I agree with him. > if not, the > situation I described before won't be solved: win32 users will have endless > choices of non-standard, not-entirely-working ports. That all depends on your definition of non-working. In my opinion, the cygwin port of coreutils works just fine (but I am a bit biased, as I maintain the cygwin port). -- Eric Blake _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils