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From: "Tim Horton" <tjhorton AT hotmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Subject: problems and suggestions...
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 00:53:50 CDT
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Cygwin is great, and I'm really impressed with it.  I'm pretty
sure I have the most recent versions, but I've noticed some
discrepancies in behavior between win98 and NT:

1. sscanf %n format on NT, after scanning "0" into numeric variables
   - on win98, %n correctly records the number of characters processed
   - on NT,    %n incorectly records fewer numbers of characters
   e.g. int value, n;  sscanf("0", "%d%n", &value, &n);
        results in n = 1 on win98, but 0 on NT
   e.g. double value; int n;  sscanf("0.0", "%lf%n", &value, &n);
        results in n = 3 on win98, but 1 on NT!

2. gdb on win98
  - on NT    gdb successfully brings up a graphical interface
  - on win98 gdb just exits, although -nw works

3. cygwish80 on win98
   - on NT    cygwish80 runs successfully
   - on win98 cygwish80 exits complaining about missing init.tcl
                              and tk.tcl
              (it works if I copy /usr/share to /share)

My win98 is first edition, and cygwin is right up to date.
My NT server has service pack 6a and the cygwin might be a few
weeks out.

Some other things that might merit consideration...

1. the setup program does not report it's options

   While I've seen messages in the archives in which people use -u
   and other flags, I haven't found any description of these flags,
   and it doesn't seem that setup responds to -h, -?, --help etc.

2. the setup program appears to scan subdirectories for .tar.gz files

   I had put the old versions in a subdirectly called "old", and
   setup installed these as though they were in the current directory
   without warning.  I only noticed this the second time it happened.

3. maybe cygwin shouldn't store things directly in C:/

   e.g. uninst.bat, libpng*, zlib*

   Many programs store install/uninstall information/logs in C:/,
   so there can be conflict, and it's not obvious to casual users
   these are cygwin files.  Perhaps /usr/ should hold uninst.bat
   at least.

4. for most users, the system /bin is the same as their person    $HOME/bin, 
which in some cases pre-existed cygwin

   Cygwin potentially overwrite executables in /bin for people
   like me that have created and used it for their own collections
   of programs we've written or downloaded over the years.
   These now live in danger of being clobbered by cygwin, and
   are had to separate out when I've had to delete cygwin after
   an install problem.  It might be ideal if cygwin/cygnus
   executables had their own separate bin somewhere.  Maybe
   /usr/bin might have made the best sense as a home for
   cygwin executables?

Again, cygwin is great stuff.
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