Some broad questions about the project from a semi-newbie....

[jrm]

Please forgive me if some of this is a little basic.    What I'm 
considering is bringing the tool chain into use in a commercial 
setting.  I need to do everything I can to confirm that it can work for 
us before investing much time.

Over ten years ago we worked with mingw to cross compile for windows 
from linux.   At that time, we concluded we couldn't use it because it 
could only link "C" DLLs built by Visual Studio tools (when source 
recompilation wasn't an option).    We also expected that we would need 
to link with "C++" libraries for which we didn't have source.

Since then, we have learned that we have limited need for an ability to 
link third party "C++" libraries built from visual studio.   It also 
appears that the current tool chain can handle "C" linkage to Visual 
Studio generated ".obj" and static ".lib" - not just DLL.

I would appreciate confirmation of the following:

  * The project provides the full GNU tool chain for C++
  * Debugging on windows is possible via windows compiled version of gdb
  * The tool chain can link against static "C" libraries or DLLs created
    by Visual C++ (.obj, .lib and .lib/DLL)
  * The tool chain CAN NOT link against C++ libraries or DLLs created by
    Visual C++ (differences in C++ infrastructure, ABI, etc.)
  * Well behaved and recent builds of QT 4.x exist and are regularly used.
  * Executables and/or DLLs created with this tool chain the same
    licensing implications as objects created for linux on linux.
  * There are no objects /automatically/ contributed to linked results
    that would require a company to open their source code base.


Presuming all of the above to be true, I would appreciate a 
recommendation on the best stable point to start, where I can get a 
complete tool chain and supporting libraries including QT 4.

My thanks and regards to everyone working on this project.

-jrm