It is kind of tragic when software A (eg Dev-C++ non Cygwin name file paths) cannot communicate with software B (eg GDB compiled to use Cygwin name file paths) without extra massaging of file paths (eg cygpath) that may not be practical. Not only that, the label 'Cygwin compiled' does not even guarantee consistency about how file paths are handeled.
CCE uses a Cygwin compiled GDB with its own custom interface to GDB that is plugged into Eclipse. It can be argued they did not need to use a Cygwin based GDB and could have discarded the parts that cause problems (such as readline) if they do not want to put the resources into massaging readline etc in without Cygwin. I disagree that you 'cannot get rid of Cygwin'. It is not needed for a cross compiler and debugger suite. It should not be difficult to produce a generic 'no Cygwin' cross compiler template system that can be shared among various compiler families. Codesourcery.com have succeeded for their GNU ARM and their source code should be a good starting point (I have tried to downloaded the source code twice but it was corrupted). There was a patch for GDB version 5.1 that compiled without Cygwin and allowed readline. I regard it a poor decision not to incorporate the patch for future versions. I also suggest combining MinGW compiled and Cygwin compiled tools in a single suite was asking for trouble. Either one or the other where there is cross communication. I also suggest if you want to encourage more participation and contribution to mspgcc and similar that effort be given to solving these 'unsexy' problems which should not exist. These tools have a huge learning curve and time committment. I am not ashamed to say if participants see potential for indirect financial reward (such as through support and conultancy fees) then the attraction rockets up! John Heenan > From: Steve Underwood <[email protected]> > > John Heenan wrote: > > >It would be nice if we could get rid of cygwin altogether, however > >there are known issues using the cygwin free MinGW/MSYS tools with > >regard to cross compilers, such as collect2 for the compiler and > >readline for gdb. However codesourcery.com have overcome these > >problems for its GNU ARM distribution. Apparently they get paid by ARM > >to maintain and update the distribution. There is a good chance their > >gdb for ARM will work in Dev-C++ and possibly Eclipse. > > > > > You can't get rid of Cygwin, so forget it. We used to build with Cygwin > and MinGW. The MinGW versions ran faster, but had many many problems. > Curing those is a *major* project, as the MinGW folk have found. The CCE > folk also seem to have figured this out, as CCE using Cygwin too. > > Just live with Cygwin. It works well. > > Regards, > Steve >
