Hi Mark, (OFF TOPIC) I've used Cygwin for years, and have found it to be a very good experience. I give it two thumbs up. When I run Cygwin's setup.exe program, I change the TOP LEVEL "ALL" item to "Install", so that the installer installs absolutely all packages. Selecting all packages (ALL: Install) does not pull down source -- that would have to be done on a case-by-case basis. I have only needed to do that in a few cases (because I like my 'ls' command to group directories together, so I've twinked out the ls source code; I like 'diff' to behave slightly differently; I like 'find' -ls option to behave more like 'ls -l'; yada yada yada). Many people have had good experience with MinGW. MinGW does not have the viral licensing issue that Cygwin has regarding use of Cygwin DLL (which is their Unix-ish facility API layer). Some folks, such as Sisyphus / Rob, have had unpleasant experiences with Cygwin. There are some VERY sharp edges (non-Unix-isms) in the Cygwin environment. Cygwin fans (such as myself) have grown to ignore / accommodate them -- but they are present, and can be quite annoying. Other viable alternatives for Unix environments on Windows include: + MKS http://www.mkssoftware.com/ + Microsoft Services for Unix 3.5 (SFU) http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sfu/default.mspx (I think this is free these days, instead of hundreds (thousands?) of dollars.) + Interix 2.2 http://www.interix.com/ (Note: I believe SFU 3.5 is the evolutionary offspring of Interix.) And my highly recommended alternative to CMD.EXE: + 4NT.EXE from JPSoftware http://www.jpsoft.com/ (free full-functionality trial; nominal fee to register) If you ever used Norton Utility's NDOS.EXE command shell, you were REALLY using the 4DOS.EXE shell from JPSoftware. 4NT.EXE is the analog for NT (3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0 (2000), 5.1 (XP), 5.2 (Server 2003), 6.0 (Longhorn)) -- I don't know if they supported NT 3.1 (I started with NT 3.5). I have not used MKS for years. When I did use it, I was not impressed. Others here at my company use MKS, and are quite happy with it. I have not used Interix or SFU. I have heard of others on this forum using them and were quite pleased with them. Some folks at my work use SFU (such as the build engineers) and are quite happy with it. MinGW is highly recommend for making (non-Unix-ish) Windows software. I've heard there are some quite nice IDEs for it -- I haven't used them (I'm a command line / bash shell / vim editor kind of guy). I have not used MinGW. HTH, --Eljay
