From: noer AT cygnus DOT com (Geoffrey Noer)
Subject: Re: CygWin32 and Linux
8 May 1998 08:16:57 -0700
Message-ID: <199805080426.VAA18411.cygnus.gnu-win32@rtl.cygnus.com>
References: <199805071042 DOT FAA20991 AT smtp2 DOT mailsrvcs DOT net>
Content-Type: text
To: vtailor AT gte DOT net
Cc: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com

vtailor AT gte DOT net wrote:
[...]
> I think if you get some experience at porting apps, you'll come to
> realize that cygwin.dll favors BSD Unix more than Linux Unix.  Probably
> because of the geographic influence.
[...]

Many of the choices were done for licensing reasons.  For embedded
programming purposes, our libc/m (newlib) can't contain GPL'd code
(i.e. microwave oven manufacturers don't want to be required to ship
libc sources on demand because of the GPL).  So newlib is a
combination of BSD and Cygnus-written code.  This is the libc/m we use
for Cygwin32.

In terms of Cygwin32 internals, sometimes we've picked the easiest
thing to implement (ptys are svr4-based) or gone with what was better
documented.  The Cygwin32 documentation needs to include more
information on what's what.  If someone wants to work on that, please
let me know.  :-)

In terms of overlap with Linux, there isn't a lot of potential sharing
that could be happening I don't think.  A possible exception is that
we might want to use RPMs for binary distribution of individual
packages.  The Cygwin32 "kernel" is almost totally unlike the Linux
kernel since Cygwin32 is built on top of Windows whereas Linux is the
actual OS.

-- 
Geoffrey Noer
noer AT cygnus DOT com
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