MinGW and Python

[Ross Ridge]

Ross Ridge wrote:
> Not exactly.  They're both GCC, but the MinGW compiler that you can
> download from MinGW WWW site is a native Win32 appliction, while the
> "MinGW" compiler included with Cygwin and invoked by "-mno-cygwin" is a
> Cygwin application.

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> Any Cygwin application is a native Win32 application, which just happens
> to link with cygwin1.dll (which also is a native Win32 DLL)

Nonetheless, Cygwin applications are not generally considered native
Win32 applications because of the dependency on CYGWIN1.DLL and the
related environment.  While what you're saying a strictly true, the
term "native Win32" is used to make a distinction between a port of a
program that doesn't use or require the Cygwin environment from one
that does.  For example, the official version of Python for Windows is
considered a native Win32 application because it's implemented using
the Windows APIs directly, as opposed to the Cygwin's version of Python
which implemented using Cygwin's POSIX emulation API, and only uses the
Windows API indirectly.

                       Ross Ridge