[Box Backup-dev] COMMIT r255 - in box/chris/win32/vc2005-compile-fixes/lib: common compress server win32

[Charles Lecklider]

Martin Ebourne wrote:
> I don't think it's unreasonable for developers to install cygwin. That's
> pretty much how autoconf is intended to work.

Well, I do :-)  Cygwin is an evil kludge designed to prevent *nix
programmers from having to come to terms with a different way of doing
things.

> Clearly users shouldn't have to install cygwin, but precompiled binaries
> is the right answer there.

As long as they're native non-Cygwin binaries, sure.

Maybe it would help if I said what I'm trying to do with boxbackup....

I need a remote backup solution for my clients. If Ben hadn't written
boxbackup I would have had to kludge something together, and I wouldn't
have had the time to make it nearly as good.

Now, the simple reality is that in >90% of the world people run Windows.
Another simple reality is that I can only make money if I don't have to
spend time babysitting software that should just work, which pretty much
rules out Cygwin binaries.

My aim is to make the Win32 version a true native *client*, every bit as
good as the *nix version. (I have no interest in seeing a Win32 server
version, but I don't want to prevent it either). However, in order to
have time to do that I need to have a Windows development environment,
not a unix one ported to kinda work under Windows, maybe, when it feels
like it and the phase of the moon is right.

Hence, no Cygwin anywhere, and if at all possible, no Perl. I like Perl,
but it's a sod to integrate into the build process under Windows.

-C