[Mingw-w64-public] Wine and mingw-w64 cooperation

[Jacek Caban]

Hi Ruben,


On 22/05/2019 22:17, Ruben Van Boxem wrote:
> All this probably is a great idea :). I just have (entirely worthless) 2c
> two share on one point you bring up:


Thanks for sharing the opinion, it's definitely not worthless ;)


> Op wo 22 mei 2019 om 21:44 schreef Jacek Caban <jacek at codeweavers.com>:
>
>> - mingw-w64 name
>>
>> There have been talks about rebranding mingw-w64 for a long time (longer
>> than I am in joined the project). While it's a good name for a branch,
>> an established project that is no longer related to mingw.org could have
>> a better branding. Kai mentioned that ironcrate was considered as some
>> point, but to my knowledge no action was taken at that time. Alexandre
>> offered lately that Wine brand could be used for mingw-w64 as well. I
>> personally like the idea. Wine is already well recognised brand and
>> brings roughly right associations. So... how about WineSDK?
>>
> The thing is, "mingw" is also a "recognized name".


Agreed, mingw (as in just mingw, replacing the original project) would 
be my first choice actually. The problem is that we can't use that 
without mingw.org authors' approval and I don't expect it coming (even 
using mingw-w64 could be considered controversial without approval).


Name similarity does not help users either, see recent case in mingw.org 
ML for an example:

https://osdn.net/projects/mingw/lists/archive/users/2019-May/000295.html


> Not only as what it
> stands for (minimalistic gnu for windows, although I never understood that
> name to describe a windows API implementation...), but also as a toolchain
> *target*.
>
> Technically, a lot of things are named to match "mingw" (GCC and Clang
> target names, for example). It has even grown out to its own frankenstein
> ABI of sorts, next to the MSVC ABI on Windows.


Yes, compiler triplets need to stay as they are, at least for 
foreseeable future.


> The suggestion to name it WineSDK (very close to WinSDK, clever that ;-) )
> seems like a missed oportunity: it would seem to tie the purpose of
> "mingw-w64" to Wine, which (for me, and a lot of other people) not the
> primary goal of this project.
> That goal is providing an "implementation" of the Windows API such that one
> can generate code that runs on Windows without proprietary tools. The fact
> that there is a lot of code shared with Wine or where it's hosted doesn't
> change that, IMHO.


That's a fair concern. Explaining such confusion seems easier than 
promoting a fresh new name. Of course keeping the existing name is even 
easier if that's the consensus.


Also, Wine is called a compatibility layer. You may think of mingw-w64 
as a compatibility layer as well: it provides Windows compatibility to 
compiler toolchain ;)


Thanks,

Jacek