Why is it compiling GMP so hard?

[Torbjorn Granlund]

Paul Leyland <paul at leyland.vispa.com> writes:

  Face it: installing a high-performance version of GMP on the Windows
  platform is hard work and, IMO, much harder work than it needs to be. 

What is difficult about it?  If you've installed the right tools,
a plain "configure; make; make check" should work.  At least it
works for other people, or so I have been told.

  [snip]  I was extremely disappointed when, a few months
  ago, someone offered to do most if not all of the work needed to make
  GMP easier to install and use on a Windows box only to be told by
  Torbjorn, in effect, that his offer was unwelcome.  I'll dig the email
  exchange out of the archives if anyone doubts my claim.

I don't recall that specifically, but if somebody offers to write
new nmakefiles (or project files, or whatever they call it over
there) then the answer will be "no thanks".  I am not willing to
create such a maintenence burden.

I am actually really fed up with opinions about what I should do
with my volunteer time.  I don't run Windows.  I don't like
Windows.  I dislike its quaility, its user interface, its
performance, its insecurity record.  And I really dislike its
non-free nature.  And I despise Microsoft's business practices.

I am not going to spend a lot less time on GNU in order to make
Windows and its non-free IDE more usable for GMP work.

And I will not express any opinions about how others choose to
spend their volunteer programming efforts.

Respectfully,
Torbjörn Granlund