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Message-ID: <20010826043608.23277.qmail@web14704.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 21:36:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Augustus Saunders <infinite_8_monkey AT yahoo DOT com>
Subject: Re: I suggest creation of a list of package maintainers
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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>I have thought about posting the list of maintainers
>externally but I've always rejected this idea since I
>know that the result would be more clueless people
>contacting maintainers directly rather than sending
>email to cygwin AT cygwin DOT com with their concerns.

I understand the concern here, and I concur that
publishing the maintainers themselves is not so
useful.  However, I think a couple of things would be
very useful:

1) A one or two sentance status update on packages
that are *not* current.  For example, after searching
the mail archives, I've found a few people talking
about building GCC 3 series, and apparently it works
(or is very close).  But nowhere have I found any
mention of why the standard distro doesn't use it yet.
 Since it's a major upgrade to a major (might I
suggest cornerstone?) package that's been out for a
few months, I would expect that Cygwin users (both new
and veteran) would appreciate knowing what's up.
2) A list of packages that are *not* part of the
standard install that are known to build ootb with the
latest Cygwin.  Also, a list of high profile packages
(how you determine this, I'm not sure) that still need
maintainers.  For example, Ruby built ootb, but GNU
Smalltack did not.

3) Kind of an extension of 2, but I'd also like to see
a list of Perl modules known to work ootb with Cygwin.
 I mean, Perl and PostgresSQL come standard now, and
yet the Postgres DBI module does not.  Oh, well it
should work ootb, right?  Nope, you gotta go get
postgres source to build it, and I haven't figured out
if I can use the Win32 prebuilts (I doubt it's going
to work, but let me know if it's worked for you...).

To summarize, I think that collating our collective
build experiences would be useful and would save
people a lot of time.  I think people considering
whether to use Cygwin would appreciate, "Oh look,
<myfavoritepackage> will work ootb!  I think I'll give
this Cygwin thing a try!"  :)  I'm not recommending
that anybody take a lot of time to put this page
together.  Just put up a few forms for an automated
page where we can just submit what packages worked or
didn't for us.  Give it a link off the "Software"
page, mention it here a couple times, and watch as we
build a community resource :)  

Augustus
writers_block AT users DOT sourceforge DOT net

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