[Haskell-cafe] Re: binding to C libraries on Windoww

[Andrew Coppin]

Robert Greayer wrote:
> It helps, I believe, if you stop thinking of MinGW with MSYS as 'a 
> pseudo-Unix system'.  They're billed as the minimal toolset required 
> on windows to use the GNU compilers and build system (and, as 
> everybody knows, Gnu's not Unix).  The great thing about these 
> compilers is that they're cross-platform and freely available, unlike 
> MS Visual Studio.  I think that it makes sense that open source 
> software developers targeting multiple platforms would want to pick a 
> tool suite that works across all those platforms, and the GNU tools 
> fit that description.  Cygwin truly is a Unix emulation, but 
> MinGW/MSYS is just a packaging of useful open source (GNU) tools for 
> Windows (including a shell).  Many programs that work well as native 
> Windows apps, such as the GIMP, are built with them.

I see. So you're saying that while Cygwin is a Unix emulator, MinGW is 
just a set of Unix-style tools which run natively on Windows?