FAQ suggestion

Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] BBuchbinder@niaid.nih.gov
Wed Mar 19 17:26:00 GMT 2008


Christopher Faylor wrote on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:31 PM:

> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 03:24:33PM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> On Mar 18 21:47, Dan Kegel wrote:
>>> --- snip ---
>>> 
>>> 9. Deploying Cygwin
>>> 
>>> 9.1  I want to bundle Cygwin with a product, and ship it to customer
>>> sites.  How can I do this without conflicting with any Cygwin
>>> installed by the user? 
>>> 
>>> A.  Third party developers who wish to use Cygwin should check if
>>> there is a version of cygwin installed and use the installed version
>>> if it is newer, or conditionally upgrade if it is not.
>>> (If you write a tool to make this easy, consider contributing it to
>>> cygwin for others to use.) 
>>> 
>>> 9.2 Can I bundle Cygwin with my product for free?
>>> 
>>> A. Only if you comply with Cygwin's license very carefully.
>>> If you choose to distribute cygwin1.dll, you must also distribute
>>> the exact source code used to build that copy of cygwin1.dll.
>>> If you ship applications that link with cygwin1.dll, you must either
>>> provide those applications' source code under a GPL-compatible
>>> license, *or* purchase a cygwin license from Red Hat.
>>> 
>>> 9.3.  Can I install a private version of cygwin that doesn't
>>> conflict with the system cygwin (in the same way that multiple
>>> versions of Wine can coexist)? 
>>> 
>>> A. The Cygwin maintainers will resist any suggestion to support
>>> this, no matter how sensible it might sound to you, because they
>>> feel strongly that the only supportable situation is for everybody
>>> to use the same cygwin instance, and for it to be as up to date as
>>> possible. 
>>> 
>>> 9.4. But doesn't that mean that if some application installs an
>>> older Cygwin library than my system had, my application will break?
>>> 
>>> A. Yes.  If you run into such an application, uninstall it, point
>>> the author to this FAQ, and try to get them to follow the cygwin
>>> deployment rules. 
>>> 
>>> --- snip ---
>>> 
>>> Is that getting closer?
>> 
>> That's quite close, especially the answer to 9.3 :) Care to create a
>> matching docbook entry for the FAQ?
> 
> Actually, I think 9.3 suggests a disagreement and hints at a point of
> view from the FAQ writer.  Also, what does Wine have to do with
> anything?  Wine is a Linux package.  
> 
>                          * * *
> 
> 9.3.  Can I install a private version of the Cygwin DLL that doesn't
> conflict with the system cygwin? 
> 
> You can have two different versions of the Cygwin DLL installed on
> your system at the same time but they must be run serially.  This
> means that you can't be running programs using both versions of
> Cygwin at the same time.  Please be aware that currently both
> versions will use the same mount table entries although this may
> change in the future.     
> 
> 9.4. But doesn't that mean that if some application installs an older
> Cygwin library than my system had, my application will break? 
> 
> It depends on what you mean by "break".  If the application installs
> a version of the Cygwin DLL in another location than Cygwin's /bin
> directory then the rules in 9.3 apply.  If the application installs
> an older version of the DLL in /bin then you should complain loudly
> to the application provider.    
> 
> Remember that the Cygwin DLL strives to be backwards compatible so a
> newer version of the DLL should always work with older executables. 
> So, in general, it is always best to keep one version of the DLL on
> your system and it should always be the latest version which matches
> your installed distribution.    
> 
>                          * * *
> 
> Unless there are clarifications needed to the above, I can check this
> in. 
> 
> Thanks for the words, Dan.
> 
> cgf

Possible Clarification: 
> Remember that the Cygwin DLL strives to be backwards compatible so a
> newer version of the DLL should always work with older executables. 
What about compatibility for Win 9x/Me when version 1.5 => 1.7?

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