From announce at swarm.org  Tue Aug 16 19:33:43 2011
From: announce at swarm.org (Swarm Announce)
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:33:43 -0700
Subject: [Swarm Announce] MinGW: New way to use Swarm in Windows
Message-ID: <4E4AFE57.2000909@LangRailsback.com>

Swarm Development Group announces a new version of Objective-C Swarm for 
Windows, that uses the MingGW ( http://www.mingw.org ) Objective-C 
compiler instead of the Cygwin Unix-emulation package. This new way to 
use Swarm has important advantages over the Cygwin package we've been 
using for over a decade:

o The MinGW compiler produces a Windows native executable that you can 
launch from Windows instead of having to launch from inside Cygwin.

o You can distribute working models as a zip file (etc.) that contains 
everything needed to run the code, including the Swarm libraries. Users 
can just unzip the directories and run your model.

o Installation is just a matter of installing standard MinGW, then 
copying the Swarm MinGW binaries onto your computer. Unlike Cygwin, 
there seem to be no consistent problems with any version of Windows.

o Models run faster (up to 25% in tests so far) in MinGW vs. Cygwin 
executables.

All the information you need is on the Swarm wiki: start at 
http://www.swarm.org

Thanks to Marcus Daniels for having the original idea and making the 
initial effort, and to Charlie Sharpsteen for overcoming the final 
obstacles.

Steve Railsback