mstoical VS llvm-mingw

I'm not a C programmer, and it took a fair bit of help from folks here on HN to get it compiling (it was forked from a 20 year old C source), for which I'm grateful.

[1] https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical

Details I didn't include but should have (I wasn't sure I'd have any replies at all... I should have had more faith, sorry)

It's a bit of a ramble, sorry about that.

MSTOICAL[0] is a fork of an old C based Forth variant, it took some help from the HN community[1] to get it to compile in a modern 64 bit environment, for which I am very thankful. However, it uses AutoConf to configure, build, install, etc... and I can't for the life of me figure out how to remove all of that logic. (C isn't my primary language, I'm willing to learn that, but adding AutoConf on top of it was too much)

In order to work on that, I was willing to switch to Linux (Ubuntu)... got everything up and running for the most part, but then I couldn't access WikidPad[2], my local Wiki with my appointments, etc. I missed a doctors appointment because of that, so went back to Windows.

The issue is around wxWindows changing the names of variables in some calls. On Windows, you just download an EXE installer and you're good to go. I couldn't figure it out because the program seems to be unwilling to support newer Python versions. (I could be wrong)

I don't understand why they felt the need to make breaking changes to wxWindows, and the python is a bit too dense for me.

So finally... I'm back in Windows 10, and decided to try to craft together a twitter clone with a bunch of weird ideas that I tossed out at 3:30 am in a twitter thread, and put into a more coherent manifesto.[3]

[0] https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30957273

[2] https://github.com/WikidPad/WikidPad

[3] https://github.com/mikewarot/iceberg/blob/main/MANIFESTO.md

Reviewing the documentation from Stoical[1], it occurs to me that fixed line length text is archaic, yet I'm new to this world of C programmers.

Is it reasonable to get rid of all the extra line breaks and make something that flows better on all screen sizes?

[1] - https://github.com/mikewarot/stoical/blob/main/doc/Stoical

That'd probably get you some way there already: https://github.com/mikewarot/stoical

> Doing Python with a C plugin, or just compiling a command line C/C++ isn't really systems programming.

I care about a minimal set of tools in order to compile C/C++ programs. thats offered by:

https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw/releases

and also MSYS2, and even the Zig C compiler. all less than 200 MB. meanwhile Visual Studio installing about 10 GB worth. If Microsoft can offer a similar experience then I am interested.

Pick a community-supported Clang-based Mingw-w64 distribution.

> AFAIK there is no native GCC compiler for Windows

might want to check your facts before spouting nonsense. there is, and has been for many, many years. more than one in fact:

https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw

https://packages.msys2.org/base/mingw-w64-gcc

MinGW is notoriously slow to link compared to MSVC, unless using llvm-mingw with the link=lld SCons option. If using MSVC, make sure to use 2022 or at least 2019 if possible – recent linkers tend to be faster than older versions.

GCC doesn't support windows/arm64, but you should be able to do it with LLVM. I've never gotten it to work myself, but should be able to supply a cross toolchain: https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw

Visual Studio is a bloated mess, and has been for many years. Its at least 10 times larger than other options, such as MinGW-LLVM:

https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw

Sadly Qt ships MinGW 8.1 which is positively ancient (released in 2018). If you're starting a new project (which you likely are if you are installing an IDE aha) there's no reason not to go for more recent compilers - msys2 has GCC12 (https://packages.msys2.org/package/mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc) and Clang 14 (https://packages.msys2.org/package/mingw-w64-x86_64-clang) which just work better overall, have much more complete C++20 support, have less bugs, better compile times (especially clang with the various PCH options that appeared in the last few versions), better static analysis, etc.

Personally I use https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw's releases directly which does not require MSYS but that's because I recompile all my libraries with specific options - if the MSYS libs as they are built are good for you there's no reason not to use them.

you can grab it here: https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw/releases/tag/20211002

Clang (and lld) do support native TLS, and mingw-w64 does have the things that are needed. I think binutils also might have what's needed too, but AFAIK the thing that's missing is support for it in GCC.

Actually, (upstream) Clang defaults to native TLS instead of emulated TLS. In MSYS2, Clang is overridden to use emulated TLS by deafult to interoperate better with GCC built code and libstdc++ though.

The toolchain I maintain, https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw, defaults to native TLS throughout.