What exactly does Cygwin do?

1

I understand that it "looks like" Linux by giving me forward slashes and providing a directory structure similar to Linux. I also know that a lot of apps have been ported to Cygwin, but if the source code is available for these apps that have been ported to Cygwin, why can't they just be compiled directly for Windows?

Progger

Posted 2014-03-27T19:51:06.577

Reputation: 173

Answers

6

Because they're Linux apps, that depend on the Linux kernel API. Windows natively doesn't provide that API, so the Cygwin DLL was created to do that. Linux apps can then be built against the Cygwin DLL, which provides (most of) the Linux services the application expects.

Andrew Schulman

Posted 2014-03-27T19:51:06.577

Reputation: 2 696

Thanks. That is helpful. Did MS provide some of these services in the POSIX subsystem or the subsystem for Unix (fully deprecated as of Win 8.1)? – Progger – 2014-03-27T20:32:10.773

@Progger: Yes, it did. – user1686 – 2014-03-27T20:40:15.970

Asked: 2014-03-27T19:51:06.577

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Active: 2014-03-28T09:37:40.217