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Re:Zig: Drop MinGW-w64 by badsectoracula on Sunday December 19, 2021 @12:20PM (#29615873)
Yeah, i've been using MinGW (and now MinGW-w64) for practically decades now, originally via MSYS and later via MSYS2 and i never remember having and real issues with it - i even did some DirectX programming with it.

The only thing i remember being an issue at some point (and perhaps still is) is that it relies on msvcrt.dll that theoretically isn't part of the Windows platform but in practice that DLL has been there since Windows 98 and the chances of this ever being a real problem are zero - so it is really an "issue" about discussions with hairsplitting pedants than a practical one :-P.

Re:Zig: Drop MinGW-w64 by slimsag on Sunday December 19, 2021 @01:53PM (#29617011)
If you squint closely, you'll see my issue is not hairsplitting but rather a practical one about trouble with MinGW headers not being super up-to-date (missing DirectX 12 APIs, etc.)

I'm a huge fan of MinGW-w64, though. I would bet most involved in the issue are. We all win by improving the status quo - I'm just a buffoon figuring out the best way to do that :)

Re:Zig: Drop MinGW-w64 by jbk on Sunday December 19, 2021 @02:07PM (#29617179)
DirectX 12 API is a pretty small case to throw all the project to trash.

Notably since DirectX headers are always a different case compared to the rest of the Windows SDK

Re:Zig: Drop MinGW-w64 by slimsag on Sunday December 19, 2021 @02:32PM (#29617426)
I'm a massive fan of your work on VLC, but I feel that's a bit of a mischaracterization..

The author of the issue spoke about his troubles with MinGW in four bullet points at the top that are not related to DirectX at all, whether you agree or disagree with those the fact is most people (including Andrew Kelley) rebutted many of his arguments, and Andrew even reached out to MinGW devs on IRC to chat about the topic of contributing upstream. That seems a reasonable approach to me.

I chimed in on the issue because DirectX 12 was the problem _I_ faced, explained what I learned, complained I still don't have a super official way to get up-to-date DirectX headers that are compatible with MinGW, and ultimately said I gave up on working on the issue out of frustration.

Throughout the issue there are people suggesting throwing out all of MinGW would be reckless, heck even I concluded that would not be possible for multiple reasons in my write-up.

I think people are reading too much into the title and trying to make this out to be some sort of attack on MinGW, I really do not think that was anyone's intent - we're just exploring if we can improve the status quo..

Re:Zig: Drop MinGW-w64 by badsectoracula on Monday December 20, 2021 @12:09AM (#29621747)
Note that with the hairsplitting bit i wasn't referring to the missing MinGW headers but to complaints about MinGW linking against msvcrt.dll when that DLL has been around since Windows 98.