[danielmewes]

You might want to check out the new Windows build instructions here: https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/blob/atnnn/windows2/W...

We've since simplified the build process, and it can now build most dependencies automatically. The only exception right now are the web UI assets which still need to be downloaded separately or copied from Linux (building these on Windows will come later).

We don't link or compile in any Cygwin code, and use all Windows APIs directly. The build system uses some Cygwin tools though. Incidentally we considered using Cygwin to achieve Windows compatibility at some point, but found that it didn't implement some of the lower-level APIs that RethinkDB uses on Linux.