[Geany] Compiling from source on Cygwin platform

[John Yeung]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Thomas Martitz
<thomas.martitz at 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