Subject: Re: The mail list in a news group
From: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)

23 Jan 1997 23:29:08 -0800
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Carl J R Johansson wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Jim Balter wrote:
> 
> > Carl J R Johansson wrote:
> > > > None of the people asking to do this or that to cygwin has offered to
> > > > pony up any money or time (except for one fellow who offered his help to
> > > > Colin Peters).  Given that, I think the response "then use VC++" is
> > > > quite a reasonable one.
> > > >
> > > Not everyone is experienced enough to be able to contribute in a
> > > meaningul manner. I thought that was obvious.
> >
> > That's totally irrelevant; the point is that, if you don't like the
> > direction that cygnus is going, you can go out and *pay* for something
> > else.  Meanwhile, the rest of us who need and want a total GNU-like
> > environment because there *isn't any alternative* are rather pleased
> > that cygwin is focusing on that, thank you very much.
> >
> How was this port created? To my knowledge by cross-compiling from
> Linux, a dual-boot system is not too uncommon to my knowledge.

That's how it was originally created; you have to bootstrap from
*somewhere*.  But there has been a (successful; thanks, guys!) push
to allow cygwin to self-build; that is the standard way these things
go, and self-hosting is always considered a rather cherry milestone.

If your point is that dual-booting Linux is an alternative to GNU-win32,
that's absurd; the point is the need to port, build, test, and
develop within a win32 environment.  Dual-booting is not an
*alternative*, it is what people are forced to do before the
bootstrapping process has gotten far enough along.

> Again you are putting words in my mouth. You may recall that I said
> originally I agree with the current priorities,

You have contradicted yourself, since your previous message said that
the priority should be on producing a "fully functional compiler".

> but I thought the
> porting of bash & co was irrelevant to porting programs. Apparently I was
> wrong about that.

Which just may flavor the rest of the "debate", eh?
 
> What I am objecting to is your apparent suggestions that porting
> Unix should be the _only_ focus,

I have never said or suggested any such thing.

> I think we can leave that to Cygnus to
> decide.

Part of my point here is how silly and inappropriate are these comments
on what *priorities* should be; it's a cygnus project, and so whatever
priorities the cygnus folks have had are by definition the "right" ones.
Rather than complaining that the priorities are the wrong ones or that
this or that "poisons the project", people should stick with making
clear what *needs* they have and let cygnus choose their priorities
accordingly.

> You also appear to be saying thay there is demand only for
> that, has it occured to you that not much else has been implemented
> yet so naturally there is more questions about it?

Since I have never said or implied any such thing, that is twice you
have put words into my mouth.

I have never said that mingw32 is a bad thing or that it is worth
focus, quite the contrary; nor have I ever said that there is no demand
for it; finding such an "appearance" is absurd, since I have explicitly
recommended it several times to those who demanded it.
And, I take it that you have now abandoned a crusade, if you were ever
on one, to get cygnus to shift their current priorities, or to lose
interest in making sure that bash, gzip, tar, ls, etc. work properly
because "there are fully functional equivalents on NT', etc.
So can we please drop this silly discussion now?

--
<J Q B>
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