Subject: Towards a more user-friendly cygwin.dll
From: [email-masked]

10 Nov 1997 20:42:01 -0800
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To: [email-masked]

One of the interesting design issues in the cygwin.dll system is the use
of a default `heap_chunk_size' that appears to be inadequate for most
situations.  After getting the Unix slrn news reader to compile with
cygwin gcc, and after changing the slrn.c file so as to use a more
cygwin-kind version of the `system(cmd_line)' command, there still appears
at the bottom of the screen a message notifying the user that the heap has
been `split'  and that this odious circumstance calls for a particularly
heroic endeavor on the part of the user; namely, the altering of a certain
`heap_chunk_size' variable in the Windows system registry.

Now, this isn't a problem to someone who knows what the registry editor
is, yet it transpires that cygwin is referenced in two places by this
Windows registry, and it is not at all clear exactly _where_ in relation
to, say, the cygwin.dll registry entry, the `heap_chunk_size' is to
appear.

Let us hope that future incarnations of cygwin will remember that 32-bit
programming was supposed to free us all from the nuisance of finite and
bounded heaps.

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