[fpc-other] Re: Which operating system is used to develop FPC ?

[Marco van de Voort]

> They use several operating systems.
> 
> AFAIK Florian uses Windows often, Daniel uses Linux, Michael uses Linux, 
> Marco uses BSD, etc.
> 
> You have to have several team members using different operating systems 
> and have at least someone obsessed or focused more on one than the other 
> team member.. other wise the cross platform support isn't as good.
> 
> However, I will mention that cross compiling is easier on Unix because 
> you can make Win32 targets from a Unix box easier than you can vice 
> versa. One problem is the Windows file system is not like unix, so 
> things like symlinks and links and what not to .SO files are hard to 
> emulate without you just making exact copies of them instead of links. 
> This was my reason for saying even a unix Mac would be easier to create 
> unix elfs on than a Win32 machine which Marco never understood.  It's 
> not just the unix file system though and the file links and symlinks and 
> such things, but the fact that the elf (or whatever binary format you 
> are creating) requires libraries and a bunch of unix related files to 
> exist in the lib search paths, which you have to chase down and find 
> from an existing unix system (but, easier to do on a unix like system 
> since the file system layout can be emulated easier).

The main reason is that dynamic linking goes 100% by name on Windows, not
anything file system related.