From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-07-21T22:59:50+09:00
Subject: Re: One-Click Installer: MinGW? or VC2005?

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006, Lothar Scholz wrote:

> Some here
>
> -1 for MingGW
> +1 for VC
>
> VC has still a much better optimizer then gcc, if you use it with care
> about 10% faster, which today where CPU's are not getting faster as
> fast is still important.

didn't someone further up this thread show that the mingw compiler was better?
in any case i'm going to say that ruby's speed isn't in the category of
needing compiler optimizations - of course i'm one that always compiles with
'-g' so as to 'optimize' my sunday after noon brash recovery ;-)

>
> MS it is keeping better capatibility. How many thousands of programms
> were brocken by the (technically unnecessary) changes from 3.3 to 3.4.

> MinGW always had problems with Windows specific new technology because
> in the past - don't know how the situation is now - they were not
> allowed to use the windows header files directly.
>
> A 77MB toolchain is extremely heavy.

seriously?  it's only a few mp3s ;-)

> Then look at the update frequency of MingW and components, i can use
> MSVC for years without problems, but the release-often/release-too-early
> sympthom of open source is a different beast.
>
> And finally, it is always a good decision to use the compiler from the
> system vendor. Unix guys should remember this. Even if it is a totally
> strange HP PA-RISC compiler. This simply gives the best compatibility.

wow.  that's strange - i've worked on hp-ux, vax, solaris, sunos, and linux
over the last 8 years and have found, without exception, that gcc produces the
fastest code.  additionally, the compiler is much (read that __MUCH__) more
standards compiant.  just getting variardic c functions working across those
platforms was a chore - unless one uses gcc/glib...

> To cut a long story short: I don't trust MinGW.

that's something i won't argue with - but is there anything specific you don't
trust?  because certainly many people don't trust microsoft either - but it's
a bit of a relgious topic for most.

cheers.

-a
-- 
suffering increases your inner strength.  also, the wishing for suffering
makes the suffering disappear.
- h.h. the 14th dali lama