[Mapserver-users] cygwin versus mingw/native/win question

[Norman Vine]

Heitzso writes:
> 
> I have potential clients that are "gotta have it
> on Win" folks.  So, while I prefer linux, I need
> to push the whole tool stack over to WinXX.
> 
> My question ... if I need all of the mapserver
> extensions rolled in for a python mapscript app
> with a postgis backend, am I better off messing with
> cygwin or messing with mingw?

My guess is it depends primarily on which you are more 
comfortable developing with and if you are comfortable
releasing the sources for your application
< see Cygwin license >.

MSVC should work as well

FWIW 
I have several mapservers deployed using a mishmash
some have a Native Win32 PostGIS datastore and some
use a Cygwin one. There is no real reason PostGIS needs
to be on the same machine as ling as you have a fast network
connection so concievably PostGIS could be on a 'Nix' box.
I find little measurable difference in performance but these
are not heavily loaded and do a fair bit more background 
processing then a 'standard' mapserver installation

As far as Python mapscript goes there are some not so 
subtle differances between a Cygwin Python and a Native
Win32 python ie one is a Posix application and the other
a Win32 application with full access to the underlying OS
features which may or maynot be important to you

Since you prefer Linux my guess is that you will have
fewer surprises with Cygwin but YMMV

HTH

Norman