From: kubitron AT cs DOT berkeley DOT edu (John Kubiatowicz) Subject: Re: Linux "bazaar" model (Re: Beta-19 and configurations....) 15 Feb 1998 15:44:10 -0800 Message-ID: <199802152151.NAA16962.cygnus.gnu-win32@hofmann.CS.Berkeley.EDU> References: <199802142127 DOT QAA01440 AT hardy DOT bbc DOT com> Reply-To: kubitron AT cs DOT berkeley DOT edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII To: cgf AT bbc DOT com Cc: vassilii AT optimedia DOT co DOT il, gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Are you under the impression that linux somehow sets itself up automatically out of the box? It doesn't. In the rawest form, you download sources from ftp.kernel.org and extract them onto your hard disk using (gasp) tar and gzip. Some package package maintainers have made things easier with various tools (e.g., RPM). These are third parties however and are not part of the "official" linux distribution system. Linux installation is *far* more automated these days. You can essentially start from scratch with the CD and install a complete system. Frankly, if a potential developer can't handle the chore of setting up his/her system to build the cygwin sources I can't imagine that they would be able to contribute to the project in any meaningful way. It is not the developers. It is the set of skilled users (like myself) who want UNIX functionality, but are far too strapped for time to wade through loads of information to get a usable system. I have been a unix developer at many times in the past. I understand that there is a lot of things that *can* be configured, but that is not a necessity. I say again, try the UWIN distribution from AT&T. This is a model that I think would be a good one to emulate. It installs out of the box and is immediately useful. It is not quite as functional as gnuwin32 has the potential to be, but it is much more convenient. The release maintainers *could* take some time to set things up so that even the most unskilled newbie could set up his system to build the sources but what is the benefit of that? I'd rather that time was spent improving cygwin, not diddling with scripts to make life easier for people who don't want to or can't understand how to set up their systems themselves. Again, we are talking about taking the knowledge that goes into all of the FAQs floating out there and coding it into installation scripts. Yes, this is a lot of work. However, if it is done properly (and Linux does this), then you will get an order of magnitude more users. When looking for bugs, this can be a good thing. Note that not all of the people who are calling for complete installation are newbies. Note that outside of the working gnuwin community, gnuwin has a reputation as too raw to be useful. This is *NOT* a criticism of the package, merely a criticism of the set of things provided and the difficulty (and skilled time) involved in setting it up. Anyway, you're *still* not getting it. If you think this is a good idea, why not take it upon yourself to set up some kind of auto-install system? Submit if for approval to the mailing list. See past couple of messages about the problems involved with integrated user-community contributions. As far as including editors, etc., with the package; I'm still in favor of the linux model. You can download whatever you want from the net. Great effort should be taken to ensure that UNIX applications compile "out of the box" under CYGWIN. Then, if you need an editor, download the sources and compile it. You are not getting it. Why not have a complete, usable release? You are still caught in the "GURU" unix mode. You are no-doubt a top-notch hacker (probably make 3 times my professorly salary). However, it is this kind of mentality (among other market forces) that have doomed the unix community to being a serious minority, *DESPITE* superior technology. Sigh. It would be nice for Cygnus to provide a web site with ported binaries but it should be no great hardship to use other sites that are frequently advertised on the mailing list. Yes. It is a serious time committment. And if there are 12 little configuration things that need to be done to get something working, chances are that most people will forget 1 of them and spend hours debugging as a result. This is not something that I want to spend my time on, especially since someone already figured out what is involved in getting things working. All that I'm saying is that this "Why don't they just..." attitude is rampant on this list. There are only a handful of contributors here. Mumit Khan is a contributor. Vischne (sp?) is a contributor. Sergey is a (BIG) contributor. There are five or six other people who are contributing code. Everyone else is saying "It seems to me..." and "I don't see why they don't..." Take all the people who are complaining, give them an organization and framework in which to contribute to a *COMMON* release, and you will see an explosion of usable code. GNUWIN's potential has grown far beyond the couple of people who are currently contributing. The type of organizational work required to really make this work is not all that fun, but if done properly, could really make GNUWIN be the flagship unix-for-NT package. And *THAT* would be worth the time and effort. --KUBI-- John Kubiatowicz, Computer Science Department, UC Berkeley kubitron AT cs DOT berkeley DOT edu p.s. Now just admit it. Wouldn't you love to be able to just *get* a working package from someone without having to spend a day compiling and configurating it? Why should the compilation/configuration process be repeated by everyone who does it? Can we not pool our collective resources??? - 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".