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Subject: Re: cmp missing from base
From: Warren Young <wyml@etr-usa.com>
In-Reply-To: <572D891C.2040002@towo.net>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2016 09:16:12 -0600
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References: <572C697E.1090408@towo.net> <29250DCF-60A0-4113-9834-25EA744E8F41@etr-usa.com> <572D891C.2040002@towo.net>
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On May 7, 2016, at 12:20 AM, Thomas Wolff <towo@towo.net> wrote:
> 
> Am 07.05.2016 um 03:41 schrieb Warren Young:
>> On May 6, 2016, at 3:53 AM, Thomas Wolff <towo@towo.net> wrote:
>>> after a recent fresh installation of cygwin, I was surprised that `cmp` was missing, which is part of the traditional Unix base commands.
>>> I think the diffutils package should be part of the base installation.
>> We’ve never really had a hard rule on what is in Base and what isn’t.  It’s always been a judgement call.
>> 
>> I wonder if the rule should just be “POSIX”?

Over the weekend, I realized that the rule can’t be that simple, because that would drag in GCC.

> maybe there can be a guideline, and more a guideline of common practice than of a 15th standard.

The problem, of course, is that there is no common practice.

I think the closest parallel to the Cygwin Base philosophy is the minimal or base installs of several other *ixes, particularly the BSDs.  It is also something like a throwback to the SysV Unixes, prior to about 1992, when you could count on things like X and the C compiler to be separate installs.

But even that guideline isn’t especially useful, since often such OSes *do* include the C compiler and all its support tooling.

Ultimately, I think Cygwin Base is whatever Corinna and Yaakov say it is. :)
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