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eunever32@yahoo.co.uk - 13 May 2007 13:09 GMT

Hi

After 20 years developing C/C++ on Unix (Solaris, linux)
I now find myself in a consulting company where the client environment
is java/MSWindows using Eclipse quite a bit

However after years of avoiding MSWindows I now find myself using it
everyday and maybe it's a case of being difficult to learn new tricks
but I find it extremely tough going (even after 3 years)

At the same time I recognise the value of remaining "mainstream" and
going with the "majority" environment.

Has anyone else had to switch to MSWindows? Any tricks and tips?

Regards

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Daniel Dyer - 13 May 2007 13:59 GMT

> Hi
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> Has anyone else had to switch to MSWindows? Any tricks and tips?

For Windows users of a UNIX persuasion, Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com) is
absolutely essential. It will give you most of the command line tools
that you are used to. I use it with the Poderosa terminal emulator
(http://en.poderosa.org/), which is a bit more capable than the clunky
default "DOS" box that it normally runs in. You can even run X
applications using Cygwin, if you choose to.

Dan.

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Daniel Dyer
https://watchmaker.dev.java.net - Evolutionary Algorithm Framework for Java

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eunever32@yahoo.co.uk - 13 May 2007 14:17 GMT

Hi Dan

I am familiar with Cygwin however I thought it would go against the
"spirit" of being a windows programmer. ie it would be still a unix
development just hiding the msdos prompt

If I was planning to return to say linux or solaris I might be
inclined to use Cygwin but from what I can see the majority of J2EE
software development is on windows eg banks, insurance, government etc

Regards

> > Hi
>
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> --
> Daniel Dyerhttps://watchmaker.dev.java.net- Evolutionary Algorithm Framework for Java

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Patricia Shanahan - 13 May 2007 14:34 GMT

> Hi Dan
>
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> inclined to use Cygwin but from what I can see the majority of J2EE
> software development is on windows eg banks, insurance, government etc

I've used MS-Windows for a long time, but as soon as UNIX shell
emulators became available I started using them, first MKS toolkit and
then Cygwin.

Cygwin is a legitimate MS-Windows tool. MS-Windows as a development
platform really needs a set of programmer-friendly tools. If UNIX had
not existed, I suppose someone would have designed them from scratch.
Given the years of programmer use and work that has gone into the UNIX
commands, it makes much more sense to copy them.

Patricia

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printdude1968@gmail.com - 20 May 2007 04:06 GMT

> euneve...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > Hi Dan
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Patricia

I use Microsoft Services For Unix on my windows XP Pro machine. It
won't work on an XP Home box but works quite nicely
on this one. And it has almost every ksh function you could ask for.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/interopmigration/bb380242.aspx

Alternatively, you could install Interix but I'm not sure where to get
it anymore as I don't think MS supports it.

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Daniel Dyer - 13 May 2007 15:04 GMT

> Hi Dan
>
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> inclined to use Cygwin but from what I can see the majority of J2EE
> software development is on windows eg banks, insurance, government etc

If you are developing pure Java applications, you're not really a "Windows
programmer" since your code ought to run on any supported platform. The
fact that you happen to use Windows is incidental. You're not using the
Win32 APIs or anything like that.

Where I work, we do all of our Java development on Windows workstations,
but the servers that we deploy on are mostly Solaris (and occasionally Red
Hat).

At previous jobs I used Linux as a development environment. To be honest,
while I'd prefer Linux at work and I happen to use a Mac at home, I don't
really notice many differences because I tend to use exactly the same
applications on each platform (bash, IntelliJ IDEA and Opera).

Regardless of which platform you are targetting, I still think Cygwin is
useful. You don't have to worry about remembering shell differences.
It's about being productive during development. I'd rather use 'find',
'locate', 'grep' etc. than that bloody wagging dog thing that does
searches (very slowly) on Windows.

Dan.

Signature

Daniel Dyer
https://watchmaker.dev.java.net - Evolutionary Algorithm Framework for Java

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eunever32@yahoo.co.uk - 14 May 2007 17:54 GMT

I notice that java on windows expects the classpath to be in the
"C:.." format
but cygwin would normally store in the /cygdrive/c/... format

And there exist scripts to convert on the fly

Is that the best approach?

But how does ant know to call java_wrapper ?

> > Hi Dan
>
[quoted text clipped - 30 lines]
> --
> Daniel Dyerhttps://watchmaker.dev.java.net- Evolutionary Algorithm Framework for Java

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Lew - 15 May 2007 01:19 GMT

> I notice that

Please do not top-post (placement of answers above the material quoted).

> java on windows expects the classpath to be in the"C:.." format
> but cygwin would normally store in the /cygdrive/c/... format
>
> And there exist scripts to convert on the fly

$ man cygpath

To make a cygwin path sensible to the Windows executable:

java -cp \
$(cygpath -w /usr/java/endorsable)\;$(cygpath -w /cygdrive/c/opt/java/libs) \
com.mydomain.package.MainStart

Win 2K and later can often let you use '-m' instead of '-w'.

As you noted, some Windows programs are really not comfortable with Cygwin's
notations.

Signature

Lew

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David Segall - 14 May 2007 08:01 GMT

>I am familiar with Cygwin however I thought it would go against the
>"spirit" of being a windows programmer. ie it would be still a unix
>development just hiding the msdos prompt

Perhaps your conscience would let you use Microsoft supplied Windows
Services for UNIX. It is described at
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/unix/sfu/sfu35int.mspx>
and is a free download from
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=896c9688-601b-44f1-81a4
-02878ff11778&DisplayLang=en>

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Sanjay - 13 May 2007 18:36 GMT

> Hi
>
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>
> Regards

The place where I work, out development environment is supposed to be
windows and that is mainly because it seems like every J2EE developer
knows Linux/Unix but they are more comfortable using windows. Besides
Outlook which they have to keep running all the time runs on windows
only. I on the other hand is more comfortable using Linux than Windows
(although I have used windows quite extensively). So I just set up my
environment in Linux, use Evolution in place of Outlook.

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Arne Vajhøj - 19 May 2007 21:36 GMT

> After 20 years developing C/C++ on Unix (Solaris, linux)
> I now find myself in a consulting company where the client environment
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> Has anyone else had to switch to MSWindows? Any tricks and tips?

Unlike most of the other replies I will recommend you to
learn the Windows ways and not use any *ix emulation tools.

It is the expectation of a senior developer that he can cope
with different environments.

So bite the bullet and learn Windows.

Arne

PS: I think you will find Eclipse a nice IDE. And it runs on
*ix also !

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