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Comment by slashdotaccount | Hacker News Reader

If GCC (MinGW) is working for you then why do you, a FLOSS developer, want your code to be compiled using the proprietary MS compiler? I'm genuinely interested.

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It's often better to integrate with the native tools of a given platform. For example, I wouldn't really ever contribute to a Mono project, even if it's on Linux, because .NET is weird Windows stuff. Same thing in reverse with MinGW and Windows.

And if you want your project to truly treat Windows as first class, you have to recruit people who know, love, and use Windows.

> if you want your project to truly treat Windows as first class, you have to recruit people who know, love, and use Windows.

HN rumor has it that these creatures are mythical ;)

Given the vast number of famous counterexamples, HN rumour (as usual) is pretty wrong.

Why is .NET "weird Windows stuff"? Apart from obviously Windows-specific libraries like WMI, WinForms, etc. Even Microsoft released an example of the CLI that'd compile for FreeBSD among other OSes. So the cross-platform part of the runtime and much of the basic libraries is truly built-in.

Or did I miss your point?

I was slightly exaggerating for effect.

Windows has a number of native compilers: MSVC, MinGW GCC, Clang, icc, Pelles C, Embarcadero C++Builder etc. Nothing makes MSVC special, except that it happens to be from the same vendor as the operating system. MinGW GCC is free software, has better standards support, better warning output and can compile more FOSS libraries. These are all pretty desirable features, especially if you're a FOSS developer.

I consider myself a Windows user and developer, but I have no love for MSVC. I'd much rather have everything I use compile under MinGW GCC.

You're the first person I've ever heard who considers MinGW GCC 'native.' Every time I've worked on an OSS project that uses MinGW, every Windows dev who comes along says "ugh, MSVC++ please."

We must run in different circles.

I think "native" meant "doesn't target a VM."

To give you a short and blunt example - if your API is C++ then you can't mix gcc/msvc dlls - simply because exported symbols won't be found, and much more other (hidden) problems.

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