GnuWin32 or Cygwin - from a programmers point of view

Question

For a programmer with Linux skills and a love of the command line, what is better to use on Windows - Cygwin or GnuWin32?

I tried to find a good comparison or a list of differences but couldn't find anything remotely complete. Also, I wondered whether this should be a superuser.com question, but decided against it, because I'm asking precisely for use of the tool for a programmer.

I'd like to know the common pitfalls and restrictions of each of the solutions. Interoperability with windows is an important issue, for my main development is done in MSVC...

Answer 1

It is absolutely no contest

GnuWin32 does not include Bash

This is a critical part of the Cygwin distribution. Switching from cmd.exe to Bash was a huge boon to my productivity. cmd.exe is cripped in comparison to Bash.

GnuWin32 is old

Many program go years without being updated.

• tar 2003
• coreutils 2005
• zlib 2005
• make 2006
• wget 2008

I would not use GnuWin32 unless I had no other choice.