> Obviously you could just use a different compiler on Windows but that causes a whole bunch of problems for the users of your library if they want to compile i

> Obviously you could just use a different compiler on Windows but that causes a whole bunch of problems for the users of your library if they want to compile it themselves. Requiring a tool chain that is not native to the operating system is an easy way to alienate your developer audience. I don't like this attitude. A lot of Windows developers like to pretend that Windows only has one compiler and therefore doesn't support C99. Not only is there MinGW GCC, there's also Pelles C and Clang which are all just as "native" as MSVC (you don't need Cygwin or MSYS to use GCC or Clang.) As long as you release a DLL and an import library, I don't think anyone will feel alienated.