On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Daniel Reed wrote:
On 2004-09-07T10:51-0500, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: ) Installing Cygwin is similar in magnitude to installing another ) operating system. Cygwin just happens to be subordinate to Windows. ) Perhaps not all your users are Unix-literate or want to install ) another "operating system" on their Windows box in order to use the ) software?
The point is best addressed in the comment:
If I install some proprietary binary only commericial software for Windows, it may come with any number of add-on libraries and support programs that are hidden behind the scenes. Why is that any different than having a set of POSIX compatibility libraries and support programs hidden behind the scenes?
Cygwin's "kernel" is contained within cygwin1.dll, and much of its other functionality is available as additional DLL files. Their use does not require an OS-level installation.
Yet this DLL accesses a "root" filesystem containing /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/fstab, terminfo, etc.. Windows filesystems are "mounted". This smells like an "OS" install to me, even if it is subordinate to another. The typical Windows user is dumber than a board when it comes to Unix topics, and most are not even aware that it is possible to access a CLI under Windows or that Windows supports environment variables.
My point was that with a small amount of work, many packages which target Unix can be built as pure WIN32 programs without the additional baggage. In fact, with MinGW/MSYS, I have taken many Autoconf-based packages whos author's never considered native Windows and built working native WIN32 versions.
Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen
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