Subject: RE: RE: Big Brother is Real
From: "Stephan Mueller" <[email-masked]>
To: "Timothy C Prince" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 16:12:24 -0800

Speaking only for myself, and not my employer (because I don't know what
he thinks) I can only say that from everyone I've met, and everything I
do know, it appears to me that API changes are always made with
backwards compatibility in mind, and the goal is never to break existing
apps -- indeed, the efforts made to remain compatible with existing apps
are astounding.

stephan();

-----Original Message-----
From: Timothy C Prince [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 12:09 PM
To: Stephan Mueller
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: RE: Big Brother is Real

-----Original Message-----
From: "Stephan Mueller" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:37:19 -0800
Subject: RE: Big Brother is Real

Can someone elaborate on exactly which APIs have changed incompatibly
(in 64-bit Windows)?

I'm only mildly familiar with the 64-bit story, but my understanding is
that the the 64-bit APIs are basically the same as 32-bit (with the
natural widening of types) but given that the 64-bit API is 'new' in
that there's no legacy (shipped, binary) code base to support, this is
probably the best time to make API changes (in 64-bit) that repair bad
design decisions and bad interface bugs and so made earlier (in 32-bit
API, or maybe even 16-bit).

Regardless, how does this affect Cygwin at all?  The 32-bit subsystem on
64-bit Windows OSes should run 32-bit apps with no semantic changes --
that's its job, and I would be surprised if the behaviour of any 32-bit
APIs was gratuitously different (although it's possible there are bugs
-- worth reporting if that's the case).

If you're trying to compile cygwin itself for 64-bit, well, you may need
to make some cygwin source changes with #ifdefs, yes -- is that the
objection here?

stephan();

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Igor Pechtchanski
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 8:31 AM
To: Andrew DeFaria
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Big Brother is Real

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

> Tim Prince wrote:
>
> > Lack of cygwin support has impeded the market penetration of Windows

> > XP64, but it seems Microsoft would rather lose out to linux and HPUX

> > than let their customers run cygwin. It may be they don't understand

> > how many customers depend on cygwin, which is their fault too, since

> > they don't support those customers, just collect the fees and forget

> > them.
>
> How exactly does Microsoft stop their customers from running Cygwin?
> I'm curious because as you even admit "many customers depend on 
> cygwin" so it is demonstrable that Microsoft has no power to stop 
> their customers from running Cygwin.

Microsoft doesn't "stop their customers from running Cygwin", it
introduces API changes that are incompatible with previous versions, and
thus cause programs like Cygwin to not run.  Whether this is deliberate
or accidental remains debatable.
	Igor

__________________________________________________
As I understand it, cygwin requires more compatibility than Microsoft
guarantees between the 32-bit subsystem of WinXP64 and the 32-bit
Windows OS, or even between beta and final versions of XP64.  As Igor
pointed out, we have no way of knowing whether breaking cygwin is
deliberate or accidental.  

The price tag in $$ or volunteer hours to build a 64-bit native cygwin
is more than anyone has been able to scrape up, so, yes, I'm talking
about the 32-bit subsystem.  It was quite useful at the time when it did
support cygwin, even on those machines which have since had their anchor
status confirmed.  As even the native linux g77 for ia64 isn't
competitive with g77 on XP32, or with gcc on ia64, I don't see any
interest in a g77 cross compiler, and I'm not going there.  I think each
IA64 compiler development effort has far exceeded its initial budget.
Tim Prince

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