Re: GitForWindows vs. Cygwin

[Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca>]

On 2018-03-21 11:26, Tony Kelman wrote:
>>>>>>> Can anyone enlighten me about the relationship of "Git for Windows" to Cygwin?
>>>>>> They are not related.
>>>>> Yes, they are.
>>>> No they're not.
>>> Tony explained well how they are related; Git for Windows is compiled in
>>> and packaged with MSYS2 which is forked from Cygwin.
>>
>> No, Tony explained how it's related to MSYS2. This isn't a MSYS2 mailing list.
> 
> Don't think they have one. Git for Windows does, and somewhere like
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/git-for-windows/jtwpuGa5u_E
> would have been a pretty good alternate place to ask this question.
> But I also explained how MSYS2 is very closely related to Cygwin,
> and pretending they are completely unrelated and have nothing to do
> with one another is myopic and misleading. If "how are MSYS2 and
> Cygwin related to one another" is a banned question on this list,
> perhaps that should be written down somewhere.
> 
>>>> It doesn't use cygwin, therefore it's not related. Since this is a 
>>>> cygwin mailing list, that means the first two replies were correct —
>>>> this isn't the place to discuss it.

>> Which means this still applies.
> 
> When the vast majority of the code in the MSYS2 runtime is exactly
> the same as the code in the Cygwin runtime, and Git for Windows uses
> msys-2.0.dll in a number of places (which is essentially a renamed
> copy of cygwin1.dll) the question was fair. Particularly given Cygwin
> has its own git package, it's only natural to wonder how that differs
> from Git for Windows, and how it differs from the probably lesser-
> known msys2-git package (which is built in very nearly the same
> configuration as the Cygwin git package, posix style).

Only GfW and Msys2 Git projects can answer how Cygwin components are used by
their projects. Most (all?) of Cygwin winsup and (all of?) newlib are available
under permissive BSD(-style) licences that allow all uses of the code.

It's possible that the developers of those GfW and Msys2 Git packages have moved
on from those projects and the current maintainers don't have the basis to answer.

One might expect some of those maintainers to be subscribed to this list and
able to answer, but they may not, and just check web archives, or they may
choose not to get into this discussion here, although they could perhaps suggest
a more appropriate forum, or take the discussion off-list.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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