Consider swapping MSVC for MinGW #14
Description
Windows usage requires a Visual Studio installation. We use zig for compiling and linking user programs, and although this is a seamless experience on MacOS and Linux, the same is not true for Windows users.
Migrating to MinGW would bring the same seamless experience to Windows users.
Some considerations to take into account:
- How does this impact performance?
- Should this be optional?
- Note: Pypi does not have a simple way of selecting between MinGW/MSVC builds.
- We would need to find another way of allowing switching, perhaps bundling both.
- Does it impact the range of features?
- Nvidia does not support MinGW
- But we would only provide cuda-optimised plugins, and there are no plans to bring cuda into Selene itself
- can a MinGW-compiled executable dlopen an MSVC-compiled library if we only read the selene_ functions?
- will calling conventions be an issue?