revise Package Contributor's Guide?

Andrew Schulman schulman.andrew@epamail.epa.gov
Sun Jun 16 04:46:00 GMT 2013


Since I first started building packages for Cygwin 8 or 10 years ago, several
things have changed for package maintainers, especially recently:

(1) Most maintainers will now be building 32- and 64-bit versions of their
packages.

(2) Probably no one is using a generic build script any more.

(3) I believe that some of the work we used to have to do, such as creating
Cygwin-specific README files, isn't needed any more.

(4) Recent changes in cygport allow maintainers to do away with even more of the
manual work they used to do, such as creating pre- and postinstall scripts and
setup.hint files.

Unfortunately, none of this information has made it into the Package
Contributor's Guide (http://cygwin.com/setup.html).  I think the guide has
fallen significantly out of date with how packages are being built now.

For myself, I need the Guide to be updated so I'll know what the best practices
are for building packages now.  I see references to the above points on
cygwin-apps, but I have the constant feeling that I've missed the original
discussion and don't know the best way to build packages any more.

Would someone be willing to revise the Guide to reflect the above points?  I
could help, but I don't think I know enough.

And:  Is there a consensus that the g-b-s method of building packages should be
retired?  The disadvantages of g-b-s are well known, and I can't think of any
advantages that it has now over cygport, but maybe someone can correct me.

Andrew



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