Re: Gnat cross compiling FreeBSD to Win32 ?

[DPH <rally2xs@compuserve.com>]

On Sat, 11 May 2002 20:21:06 +0000 (UTC), Preben Randhol
<randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:

>On 11 May 2002 20:17:08 +0200, Pascal Obry wrote:
>> Please don't be so hard with Windows. I have yet to find my XP box to
>> crash... And yes I'm pushing it a lot :) Windows 2000/XP are very stable.
>
>But oh so cumbersome compared to Linux when doing development. In
>windows you *need* an IDE, in Linux you can do most of these things in
>other ways.
>
>Preben

Not to be argumentative, but please describe.  Just take debugging for
example.

In Borland C++, I can make the cursor hover over most any variable on
the screen and get the value given to me in a popup tooltip.  I find
that very convenient and can't see how a command line interface (or
anything else besides an IDE or other graphical interface, although
you may have some mechanism I'm not familiar with) would be as
convenient.

In Borland, I can bring up the whole array of breakpoints I have, and,
in a window, see how they are configured - whether they are
instantaneous breaks or count passes or wait for conditions and if so
be able to view the conditions.  How is such convenience accomplished
without an IDE?

I've thought about going to Linux for reasons having to do with Bill
building in copy protection to things like Windows Media Player and
trying to keep it all hush-hush (but hush-hush doesn't work with the
internet around! <G>) and just generally being too damn friendly with
those that want to make it possible for record companies to be able to
force you to listen to a song on just 1 machine, not be able to rip it
to a CD and take it in the car, etc.  Linux looks like a way around
that.  And my Win 98 will do it now, and I'm not buying W2K or XP or
etc. that are likely to be used against me.  So... there's linux,
which is built for users, not for record companies.

So, anyway, I've thought of going to Linux as described, but have
dreaded it as a step backward with having to deal with a command line
again (I hate that...)  Of course, now there's Borland Builder 6 for
Linux, and GPS is coming for Ada.  Wheee...  

Dave Head