From: Patrick Hurley <phurley@...>
Date: 2006-07-22T10:17:16+09:00
Subject: Re: One-Click Installer: MinGW? or VC2005?

I have written a fair number of C extensions and for me it comes down
to the following:

MinGW Pro:
Much easier to build Linux/Unix libraries due to the complete tool
chain (autoconf, etc)

MinGW Con:
Uses an older buggy CRT
Questionable licensing issues

VC 2005 Pro:
Should be better optimized and tuned for the windows environment (not
saying it is, but generally vendor tool chains perform better than
gcc).
Better exposure to OS API's

VC 2005 Con:
Much harder to build many Linux/Unix libraries

------------------
I love Ruby and will use it under Linux and Win32 regardless of the
final decision that is made. I would say that if Microsoft was willing
to provide some tools or bounties on a tool chain that would allow
people using their OS to make better use of more Open Source libraries
(autoconf, bash, etc) - with their compiler at the core that would
probably be best - and while I am dreaming how do they feel about
providing a Unix like fork API <grin>.

Without that tool chain I think both sides of the debate have more or
less equal arguments and it really comes down the developers needs
(Unix tools vs tighter OS integration).

My opinion for what it is worth (not much :-)
pth