3 ms·

So they essentially had to re-write the windows system files (the DLLs) to implement libc and other linux friendly stuff?

• monocasa 8y ago
  Yeah. FWIW, Micorsoft's implementations of Win32 have swapped out the kernel a few times anyway, so it's not the biggest leap for a third party (DOS/Win32s, Win9x, WinNT). Because of this, Microsoft considers the system call layer to be unstable, and appears to go out of their way to change the system call table every service pack. So the dll entry points are the stable ABI, and that's what 99.99% of developers rely on.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    That's an oddly un-Microsoft move given their general attitude towards maintaining compatibility even for undocumented API…
    • monocasa 8y ago
      They've backed away from their classic Herculean efforts at back compat over the past decade or so.