suggestions for cygwin developers

[Ken Dibble]

Igor Pechtchanski wrote:

>On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Ken Dibble wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Chris January wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Alex Goldman wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>When Cygwin gets set up, it would be more user-friendly if it placed
>>>>two icons on the desktop:
>>>>one should start maximized Rxvt; another should start X with a
>>>>couple of xterms or whatever.
>>>>First-time users might think that the MS-DOS terminal is as good as
>>>>it gets, and this is not good for Cygwin. Others still have to
>>>>figure out how to start Rxvt automatically and how to configure it
>>>>to look pretty.
>>>>
>>>>Also, it would be neat to be able to keep Cygwin up-to-date
>>>>automatically.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>How about a prompt when a new Cygwin DLL version is available:
>>>
>>>A new version of Cygwin is available. Run setup to install the latest
>>>version.
>>>
>>>This could be included as part of the /etc/profile or something.
>>>
>>>Chris
>>>      
>>>
>>Checking to see if a new version available assumes an internet
>>connection. My opinion is that this would play havoc with dial-up users.
>>    
>>
>
>Agreed.  I would guess it could be a small service (a nice implementation
>would even put an icon in the system tray).
>
>  
>
>>If this is something you want, here is a  hack to accomplish it.
>>I'm sure there are better, cleaner ways to do this and it will break
>>as soon as something in the package list changes, but it's 5 am
>>and I am not ready to think yet.
>>    
>>
>
>While the effort of actually writing code at 5am is commendable
>(especially since you said "yet" -- the only time you'd see *me* writing
>code at 5am is if I'd been doing it all night :-) ), the code below does
>do some wasteful things.
>
>  
>
>>#!/bin/bash
>>
>>#Igor's whichpkg
>>function whichpkg() {
>> wget -qO- "http://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=$1" | \
>>   sed -ne '/Cygwin Package List/,${s#</\?[^<]*>##g;p}'
>>}
>>    
>>
>
>You could also simply 'wget -qO- "http://cygwin.com/packages/cygwin"' and
>find the last line that starts with "cygwin".  That would be *wa-ay*
>faster.
>
>  
>
>>LATEST=`whichpkg cygwin | grep "emulation" | tail -1 |  awk -F "-" '{print $2}'`
>>    
>>
>
>Even if you do use the "whichpkg" above, it's probably better to search
>for 'cygwin1\.dll'... :-)
>
>Besides, this would lose the Cygwin-specific release number.
>
>  
>
>>CUR=`uname -a | awk '{print $3}' | awk -F"(" '{print $1}'`
>>    
>>
>
>CUR=`uname -r | awk -F"(" '{print $1}'`
>
>or
>
>CUR=`cygcheck -cd cygwin | sed -ne 's/^cygwin\s\+// p'`
>
>Both will not do the right thing if you have a snapshot installed.  You'll
>have to think about what exactly the "right thing" is in this case.
>
>  
>
>>if [ $CUR != $LATEST ]; then
>> echo "new cygwin dll version "$LATEST" available"
>>else
>> echo "Your cygwin dll is current"
>>fi
>>    
>>
>
>Again, you need to also deal with snapshots.
>
>But if this were written in C, run as a service, and extended to all
>installed packages, it could be the beginning of something useful. :-)
>	Igor
>

Yes, I  know it was wasteful.  I guess I failed to make my point.

OPINION:  I don't believe in having the latest and greatest of 
everything.  I believe
                    in STABLE ( as anyone who has looked at my cygcheck 
will attest).
                    So, like I said,  I really don't think something 
like this belongs in cygwin proper.

POINT:  I can see the downside to this and have great reservations.
               But if YOU must have this, it shouldn't be too hard for 
YOU to do it.
 
YMMV.

Igor,  Thanks for continuing to enlighten me about the myriad of ways of 
doing things.

Regards,
Ken



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