Those nasty bundled Cygwin's

Larry Hall (Cygwin) reply-to-list-only-lh@cygwin.com
Sun Aug 20 08:02:00 GMT 2006


Øyvind Harboe wrote:
> One of the reasons that companies distribute Cygwin (often breaching
> the GPL by not including the source) is that Cygwin setup sucks(I do
> believe that there is a consensus that Cygwin setup sucks).
> 
> If the Cygwin install process rocked (e.g. like Debian there was some
> known stable/unstable/testing collections, zero questions install,
> automatic mirrors, able to take adavantage of fat internet
> connections, etc.), I think this would remove a lot of the reasons for
> distributing Cygwin with a product(which seems fine at first, but
> creates subtle and hard to solve compatibilty problems).
> 
> So how about adding a link to Cygwin front page saying something to
> the effect that "we're looking for sponsors to fix setup and this is
> what we plan to do"?
> 
> Or has this already been done? :-)
> 

Actually, I think the only thing that "setup.exe" doesn't currently have
some capability for is the ability to set priorities on certain mirrors
based on "some criteria".  What that criteria should be has been debated
in the past.  Actually, I guess I'm not sure what "automatic mirrors"
means.  I interpreted that as being able to reuse previously selected
mirrors as the default in future sessions.  But even if you are implying
that "setup.exe" should always "just know" the right mirror for someone
to use, which ties in with the issue of having priorities for mirrors,
I'm sure it could be done.  Personally, I don't think I would put that
high on the list of "must haves", since the notion of downloading from
some mirror is not at all foreign to users nowadays.  IMO, the main
argument people use for bundling cygwin1.dll in is "stability", which
ties in with your collections idea.  While it would be possible to use
"setup.exe" today for this, the missing piece is the resource to create
and maintain the "stable" collection.  As is often the case, there has
been talk about the need for this in the past.  Many of the current package
maintainers expressed lack of interest in maintaining their packages in
the new "stable" collection.  So it seems to me that this notion requires
less in the way of sponsors but rather more maintainers but perhaps I'm
reading different semantics into your use of the word "sponsor" than
you meant.

It's worth reviewing the old threads on this discussion before plunging to
far into another round though.  Rehashing old issues seldom brings about
better results than an informed poster who recognizes a problem, knows
the issues surrounding it, and can step forward with a solution that he/she
is willing to take on.  This last part is usually where discussions like this
die, much to the consternation of all involved.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

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