Differences with mingw.org cross-toolchain

[Erik Leunissen]

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 11:50:18PM +0100, Erik Leunissen wrote:
>> L.S.
>>
>> For several years, I've been using a linux hosted cross MinGW toolchain,
>> as described by:
>>
>>  http://www.mingw.org/wiki/LinuxCrossMinGW
>>
>> from where I also retrieved the sources and build script.
>>
>> I only recently discovered the fedora-mingw project and would like to
>> know how the cross-toolchains from both projects differ. Are there any
>> reasons to favor one above the other?
> 
> I think you will be the expert on the LinuxCrossMinGW chain described
> above, since I haven't used it.
> 

Not really. I'm just a user who is easily satisfied when the toolchain
delivers the goods (the binaries) for my particular case (mostly C, a
bit of C++ lately, no GUI, no X ...).

I know little about the development process for their distribution.

> I'll point out some features of our chain:
> 

thanks for your quick response.

> - We use ordinary GCC, with MinGW's binutils, runtime & W32API.
> 

By "ordinary GCC" you mean "unaltered sources"?


> - We supply lots of precompiled libraries (http://annexia.org/fedora_mingw).
> 

OK. I'll have a look there.

> - We add a few extra custom scripts/tools like nsiswrapper and
> mingw32-configure.  To make things easier to build.
> 
> - We are completely 100% open source.  We supply the source (as
> *.src.rpm) in a way that makes it easy for people to reproduce our
> builds from scratch.  Probably also a feature of the LinuxCrossMinGW
> chain, but it's worth pointing out.
> 
> - We want to encourage commercial software on top of our chain.  So
> there are no licensing impediments, except where those are imposed on
> us by the upstream library (eg. readline).
> 
> - We are very focused on Fedora, RPM, yum etc.  Of course any
> useful/relevant changes get pushed back into upstream projects, but
> the Fedora MinGW project is really about packaging this stuff up for
> Fedora & RHEL.
> 

Do you happen to know whether the focus on Fedora and RHEL would
prohibit me from using it on openSuSE? (which is what I happen to use,
there's nothing much fundamental about that choice).


> If you have any specific questions, please post them here.
> 

OK, as described above.

Thanks again,

Erik


> Rich.
>