Request for a version/ revision/ release number for the whole Cygwin release/ distribution

[Jani tiainen]

David Christensen wrote:
> cygwin@cygwin.com:
> 
> Per the Cygwin FAQ (http://cygwin.com/faq.html):
> 
> 	"If you are looking for the version number for the whole Cygwin
> release, there is none. Each package in the Cygwin release has its own
> version. The packages in Cygwin are continually improving, thanks to the
> efforts of net volunteers who maintain the Cygwin binary ports. Each
> package has its own version numbers and its own release process. "
> 
> 
> I would like to request that this policy be reversed -- that there be a
> version number for the entire Cygwin release.  Every O/S and application
> I've used had a release number for the whole thing; Cygwin should as
> well.
> 
> 
> I would especially like to request that there be a "stable"
> distribution.
> 
> 
> Why?  Because:
[snipped out reasons]

You're confusing (like it happens with Linux distros also) two things. 
There is kernel, in this case Cygwin.dll, and then there is 
applications, like bash, cat, ls etc.

Of course there exists distributions that have some common number, like 
Fedora Core 2 or Debian 3.0r2, but those just mean that if you take them 
out of box they probably work together. But that's not always the case. 
And rarely is.

> 
> 
> I hereby request that everybody who reads this message reply and express
> their opinion so that the Cygwin release maintainers will know what the
> community wants.
> 
> 
> David
> 
> 
> p.s.  I hereby volunteer my time to work on implementing my request.
> However, be warned that I have very high standards and, especially as a
> volunteer, I will not tolerate my time being wasted.

Well, you mean that you can give time but not waste it..? Isn't that an 
idea of volunteering - waste extra time you have.

What latter came up is that if you see eg. Debian that is consired to be 
"stable" among distributions it's also damn old. Quote from "The current 
“stable” distribution of Debian GNU/Linux is version 3.0r2, codenamed 
woody. It was released on November 21st, 2003." and base system is as 
old as "Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (a.k.a. woody) was released on 19th of 
July, 2002". So you see that being stable also means being old, because 
you have to test, fix, test and fix again.

Well, what about defining that stable means availability for 99% of 
time? It really means that cygwin would fail for 3.65 days, every 
year... And that's a lot for "mission critical" system. Even 99,5% would 
mean about 1.8 days offline time...

Well that's the about standards. Now have you even planned how to accept 
initially packages for testing, fixing, and finally accept packages for 
stable release? Defining process what you have tought could help a lot.

But it would be great to have, at least one mentioned some other post, 
unattented install. It would be great to say that "install these 
packages", maybe only select a proper mirror but otherwise it would do 
the trick and install one predefined Cygwin setup.

One side note:

If you develop software for customers (or public audience), where are 
the sources for published software..?

-- 

Jani Tiainen

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