On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Thomas Martitz thomas.martitz@student.htw-berlin.de wrote:
The question which raises to me: why are you doing that at all? That is, why do you want to compile Geany in Cygwin? I think the native Windows port is faster and at least easier to use.
Cygwin creates native windows executables AFAIK.
Well, the usual way to develop under Cygwin is to write source code which assumes a POSIX environment. When you compile this, Cygwin links to its own special DLL which provides POSIX emulation. So, most Cygwin applications are "native" in the sense that they are Windows binaries, but they are also not native in the sense that someone without the Cygwin DLL cannot run that application.
According to the Cygwin site, there are compiler options which let you link directly to Microsoft's libraries and NOT use the Cygwin DLL, but then you cannot assume the POSIX environment and you must code for native Windows. In this scenario, Cygwin is essentially just providing the Unix-like command shell and Unix-like compilation tools.
Presumably, if someone is talking about using Cygwin to compile Geany, what they mean is they want to compile the source as if they were on *nix, but doing so on their Cygwin-equipped Windows machine. This would fall under the Cygwin-DLL-requiring scenario. Enrico's point is: Why not just use the Windows version of Geany?
The only reason I can think of (and I am just guessing here, because I don't use Cygwin myself) is that the OP wants to use Geany as his Cygwin editor/IDE, and that a truly native Windows version (that doesn't use the Cygwin DLL) wouldn't be able to correctly access the Cygwin environment where all his development stuff is.
John