Pretty wild statement, especially considering the existance of the Cygwin Net Release. As far as I am aware, all packages contained in it are built using an autoconf-based ./configure script. Check out http://cygwin.com/. They use their own customized install agent (http://cygwin.com/setup.exe) for binary releases, which are downloaded as Slackware-style tarballs, and standard source tarballs that are patched when need be for source installs.
If we are all honest with ourselves, autoconf on Windows and the whole cygwin project is really just a moderately successful attempt to port applications designed for, and written for, UNIX to Windows without having to completely rewrite the applications for Windows.
When I see Norton SystemWorks or McAfee SpamKiller using cygwin, then I'll consider cygwin a viable development platform for Windows. Until then, it's just a port.
Why would providers of predominatly Windows tools need to use Cygwin? Cygwin provided the runtime layer needed to make it easier to port predominatly UNIX tools to Windows without refactoring the code. A nice thing to have.
MinGW provides tools that make it nice to actually refactor the code without refactoring the build process. Perhaps you should check those out.
Earnie. -- http://www.mingw.org
