RE: [Caml-list] Road to native windows OCaml...

["David Allsopp" <dra-news@metastack.com>]

Adrien wrote:
> 2008/10/14, Daniel Bünzli <daniel.buenzli@erratique.ch>:
> >
> > Le 14 oct. 08 à 09:59, David Allsopp a écrit :
> >
> >> Can I ask what the motivation is for this (out of interest, not
> >> criticism)?
> >
> > Maybe because if you want to distribute executables using cygwin you
> > have to release your code under a GPL compatible license [1].
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> > [1] http://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-3.10/notes/README.win32
>
> I would give another explanation : cygwin is big and slow.
> A base cygwin install is at least 1GB (when fully configured, after
> carefully reviewing *each* package), a regular one is 2GB. XP itself

That's not a base install of Cygwin - at least not "base" in terms of
building OCaml. My base install, for compiling OCaml MinGW only, is 123MB.
Once OCaml is built, I use the Win32 ports of the Unix utilities (at some
point I'll switch to GnuWin32 as it's a bit more actively maintained) which
adds 18MB and then there's ActiveTCL at about 50MB.

However, I make no further defence of Cygwin speed or otherwise as I don't
know how it compares.


David