Re: Packaging software built with cygwin

[Christopher Faylor <cgf@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 11:18:22AM -0600, Jay Maynard wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 10:32:46PM -0500, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:48:03PM -0600, Jay Maynard wrote:
>> >On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:31:43PM -0500, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
>> >>Remember that linking against some version of libcygwin.a doesn't mean
>> >>you have to keep to the corresponding version of cygwin1.dll.  Since
>> >>it's loaded dynamically, all you need is for the functions you need to
>> >>be present in the new DLL.  This is generally the case.
>> >Present *and* working the same or compatibly.  Unfortunately, we've
>> >found that that's not the case.
>> I sincerely doubt that you've found a problem where something that was
>> available in an older DLL is not available in a newer one.  The only
>> case I can think of where this happened is the dropping of //a for
>> /cygdrive/a.
>
>There are numerous bug reports in the Hercules mailing list archives from
>folks who have tried to run Hercules with a different version of
>cygwin1.dll than the one Hercules was built against. In every case,
>installing the version that Hercules was built against corrected the
>problem.
>
>It may be intended to be upward compatible, but that's not our experience.

Ok.  I'm not going to start scouring random other mailing lists for
cygwin bug reports so I suppose this situation will continue In absence
of any details, it's fruitless to carry this discussion any further.

>>However, just in case you need to hear it, it is true that you have to
>>provide the sources for the cygwin DLL if you want to distribute it.
>
>I have stopped distributing the Cygwin DLL entirely, since meeting this
>requirement would impose larger requirements for disk space and/or time
>than I can afford.  (See how the GPL has improved sharing of programs!
>Pfaugh.)

Hmm.  Looks like you just couldn't resist, huh?

>Of the five DLLs that Hercules needs (cygwin1.dll, cygintl-2.dll,
>cygiconv-2.dll, cygbz2-1.dll, and cygz.dll), only one is GPLed.  This
>imposes requirements on distribution of the complete package that do
>not apply to the other platforms that Hercules is distributed for.
>This is hardly going to make porting packages from Linux to Windows
>easier.

The source tarball for cygwin is 4.6M.  I don't understand why this
is a huge hardship but, frankly, I don't really care.

>I've considered, and rejected, the idea of distributing my own
>setup.ini file.  The problem is that it seems to be as much of a moving
>target as Cygwin itself.

A setup.ini with just the cygwin DLL in it seems pretty simple.

Btw, perhaps it is not your intention, but I catch a whiff of innuendo
here makes me wonder if you're really asking for help or just here to
make some statements.

>I would suggest that, if it is desired to promote the development of
>applications on the Cygwin platform, serious consideration be made to
>making it as simple as possible to install only those portions of
>Cygwin that the application requires.  This means just the necessary
>DLLs, without all of the interactive use baggage.  Right now, that's
>nearly impossible.

Supporting other people's distributions is not a core focus of
setup.exe.  However, if this is important to you it should be pretty
easy for you to submit patches to do what you want.

cgf

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