> a windows port of the GNU toolchain, so it would only work on windows. But even on windows it had a lot of warts (because these tools were build for unix in the first place, so e.g. drive letters and back slashes were problematic).

About a decade ago I worked on a project for a South Korean cellphone vendor whose name I'll not cite for somewhat obvious reasons. The build system was similar to what you describe: a poor port of unix tools for windows that required windows xp which was already obsolete in 2011. I asked why don't we use linux since the build was probably more adequate for that environment. The answer was something like "because they spent a lot of money and time to make this port so we can use windows." Korea was mostly a windows-only country at the time. They had to change because of android, but for them it seemed already too little too late.