From: jim AT jimpick DOT com (Jim Pick) Subject: glibc-based Unix Emulation Layer for Win32 17 Jul 1997 18:13:33 -0700 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199707172130.OAA17192.cygnus.gnu-win32@fleming.jimpick.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="==_Exmh_1686677012P"; micalg=pgp-md5; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0gamma 1/27/97 Original-To: *jeffdb AT netzone DOT nospam DOT com Original-Cc: win32 AT lists DOT debian DOT org, gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 15 Jul 1997 19:49:42 GMT." <33cbd411 DOT 759692 AT smtp DOT netzone DOT com> X-Url: http://www.jimpick.com/ X-Face: Hz"C77\53<,u1}C~=DFwS#Ddj161XLl6W!3g7xjxh*P'`FF^-IYQXX$a*WC~=^8rvy"~<3z UeQqGo&KZe[}lJg`\+SDMGRVIUJ~P,#(=w~yYv{g9i%"k|\J|jYVvv^Bzfwo=@AddrDMO Why would you want to use glibc, when windows has > a perfectly usable "native" libc in crtdll.dll? It wasn't my idea - but I think it's a good one. The "real" GNU libc already has the entire Unix C api interface already implemented. So it would just be a matter of figuring out how to interface it to the lower level Win32 plumbing. Once that is done, it should be 100% compatible with the glibc used in Linux (since it's the same thing). (if I'm missing something - please correct me) There might be opportunities to use the code in crtdll.dll in the sysdeps layer. I don't know yet. I haven't examined how glibc interfaces with the kernel in the sysdeps layer yet. And I haven't looked at how newlib/winsup does its thing yet either. Since Cygnus seems committed to making cygwin32 non-free - any free "GNU Win32" system is going to have to be essentially written from scratch (although we could use code from Beta 16 and before). It makes sense to do something totally different from what Cygnus is doing - because then people won't be constantly comparing the two systems. Plus, if Cygnus decides in the future to change their license to a "free" one (in the GNU/Debian sense), then all the work on an alternative Unix emulation layer wouldn't go to waste. I'm pretty committed to the idea of having a truly free Unix emulation layer for Win32 that could be used to host Linux distributions. So I'm going to start coding it. However, my Unix programming experience is rather limited - so it's going to be a real learning experience, and take me quite a while. Hopefully, enough people will volunteer to help me out, and there will be some real progress. Send "subscribe" in the body of a message to win32-request AT lists DOT debian DOT org to subscribe to our mailing list. We're also going to try to build a port of the Debian packaging system to cygwin32 (even though it's "non-free") - so there should be some interesting things happening... The logical outcome of all this is that eventually anything written to the glibc interface should just be a straight re-compile to run on top of any OS out there (initially Linux, GNU/Hurd, and then Win32). Add to this the Debian dpkg system (plus some enhancements I have in mind), and you can automate the whole porting process. Someday, we'll be able to achieve cross-platform performance and portability that Java can only dream of... (of course, Java can run on top of glibc too) :-) Cheers, - Jim --==_Exmh_1686677012P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2.6.3a iQCVAwUBM86O+eQz770qyIfJAQFF7gP/S/MK8G0+L4ZJVwgYEQAxwPaK9Daqhrrx n3haymE1gkeIek4tlWJVSPB6XLGncFWnyW8bOh1UEcxm0TSrzmCZsD9ZbD10+Qm6 9ZUfnszhcKyWLmzxTsxuxUL3wT+dWXHJ/P0Hl06yrPQQU+2LXr1QpTcc13ZT4Npa FCerMMoFpro= =RfJU -----END PGP MESSAGE----- --==_Exmh_1686677012P-- - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".