Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: new USE="win32" flag for mingw and prefix/windows support

[Andrew Udvare]

On 20/04/16 12:58, Ian Stakenvicius wrote:
> On 20/04/16 03:41 PM, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
>>> According to 'file' the binary format is actually "PE32 executable
>>> (console) Intel 80386, for MS Windows" for a random *.exe file in my
>>> /usr/i686-w64-mingw32/usr/bin

That is because Mingw is for making native executables for Windows, not
ELF files. I do not recall Gentoo Prefix supporting Mingw in a
meaningful way (it supports Cygwin IIRC). It sounds like a bit of work,
but I sure would like to see it. The problem is still that on Windows,
cmd is terrible and mintty only gives a partial solution to having such
bad terminals. Viability seems very low as every one who uses Mingw
seems to have mostly their own undocumented ways to get things to work.
You can find this pattern among many open source projects.

>> yes and while it is reported by `file` as PE32, it is sometimes referred
>> to as just win32.  its proper name, if i recall correctly is "Win32
>> Portable Executable File Format".  it is the equivalent of ELF, COFF and
>> a.out in the Linux world and Mach-O in the Mac world.  basically its the
>> format the linker/loader is looking for.

PE is essentially COFF with extensions applied. On top of that PE+ came
around the time of Windows Vista, and the format is not readable by
prior Windows versions like XP. Interestingly, even on a non-x86
platform the file will still have the MS-DOS stub (you can see this in
an XEX for Xbox 360).

Realistically, you only need to call it PE since XP is so dead.

>> with gentoo portage in there, i think
>> we'll expand in to a whole new market.

It is not easy. Ubuntu has always had trouble with Gentoo Prefix due to
a 'broken' toolchain that is kind of Debian-specific. A Debian-specific
bootstrap has to be made for this to work.

Andrew