Re: Squid port status, MinGW

Hi Henrik,

At 23.07 11/08/2003, Henrik Nordstrom wrote:

>The recent thread about the NT port of Squid and MSVC++ makes me
>wonder..
>
>Is there anything today in the MSVC++ builds which is not supported by
>the MinGW builds? Or in short, what is the benefits of the MSVC++
>build compared to the MinGW build? (put aside that the MinGW
>toolchain are slightly harder to install and use)

This is an interesting question.

MSVC++ environment is a commercial product, it seems to be a bad C++
compiler and lacks some build tools like awk, but currently it's too the
reference compiler for the Windows platform and some other OpenSource
projects are build using it (Apache, MySQL, OpenSSL, OpenLDAP, OpenOffice).

On the other side, MinGW, that can be based on Cygwin or MSYS environments
(I think that the second is simpler to use), is an OpenSource project, uses
gcc compiler, but sometimes seems to generate unstable code and lacks the
support from some OpenSource projects like OpenLDAP.

In the last months, mixing MinGW 2.0 with updated win32api and MinGW
runtimes, I have got many times a don't working squid.exe, so now I'm
waiting the release of MinGW 3.0, today at RC4 level, to verify again its
stability.

>I am afraid that the more we delve into C++ the more obscure
>limitations of this so called C++ compiler will be found, and I am
>not particularly fond of spending lots of time and effort on issues
>with a proprietary compiler if there is good free alternatives
>available.

We should don't forget that MSVC++ 6.0 is a 4 year old compiler. Reading MS
documentation, it seems that new MSVC+ 2003 .NET should be more C++
compliant, but I still don't have tested it. (In the 2002 version nothing
on C++ side was changed from the 6.0).

So, now I don't have a clear response to your question, but I think that at
the release time of Squid 3.0 we don't still have a complete native Windows
support in HEAD because there is still some works to do on two main
section: better native IPC and a native Async Socket Support like kqueue or
epoll.

So, IMHO, this question should be answered before Squid 3.1.

PS: Anyone has already tried the new Open Watcom C++ ?

Regards

Guido

-
========================================================
Guido Serassio
Acme Consulting S.r.l.
Via Gorizia, 69 10136 - Torino - ITALY
Tel. : +39.011.3249426 Fax. : +39.011.3293665
Email: guido.serassio@acmeconsulting.it
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Received on Mon Aug 11 2003 - 23:32:39 MDT