MinGW and Python

[sturlamolden]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:


> > Nonetheless, Cygwin applications are not generally considered native
> > Win32 applications because of the dependency on CYGWIN1.DLL and the
> > related environment.

> - Is winword.exe not a native Win32 library because it uses "MSO.DLL"?
> - A cygwin application does *not* require the Cygwin environment.

Cygwin executables are native windows ".exe files" just like MinGW
executables. They are built by the same compiler, a port of GCC to 32
bit Windows originally written by Mumit Khan. MinGW and Cygwin apps run
at the same speed. However, the CYGWIN1.dll is bloated and an has
unwanted overhead for many system calls. But as such, CYGWIN1.dll is
nothing more than a CRT with extended "Linux API" support, including
posix and xlib.

The problem is actually *licensing issues* related to CYGWIN1.DLL. It
cannot always be linked. CYGWIN1.DLL can only be used for Open Source
development.

"In accordance with section 10 of the GPL, Red Hat permits programs
whose sources are distributed under a license that complies with the
Open Source definition to be linked with libcygwin.a/cygwin1.dll
without libcygwin.a/cygwin1.dll itself causing the resulting program to
be covered by the GNU GPL."

Thus, if you have a commercial closed source application, you need to
use MinGW; that is, you cannot link with libcygwin.a/cygwin1.dll.

I am not sure if Cygwin has link libraries for the Win32 API. Is there
e.g. a libuser32.a for linking with user32.dll? But MinGW has that.