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Message-ID: <3C508461.60400@ece.gatech.edu>
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 17:02:09 -0500
From: Charles Wilson <cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
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To: Corinna Vinschen <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Advance notice: Remove regex package on 2001-02-07
References: <200201241105 DOT g0OB5nK31265 AT cgf DOT cipe DOT redhat DOT com> <3C503968 DOT 3090409 AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu> <20020124212745 DOT I11608 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de>
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Corinna Vinschen wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 11:42:16AM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote:
> 
>>Hmmm....this is disquieting.  Let's assume that Bob has built, on his 
>>machine,  the "HandyMedicineDatabase" application which depends on 
>>cygregex.dll.
>>
>>He can now no longer install HMD on a new machine, unless he carries 
>>around a copy of the regex package -- or he is forced to recompile his 
>>app so that it doesn't depend on cygregex.dll.
>>
> 
> As far as I understood our licensing model, the HMD application
> is either OSS or it's internally used.  Either way, Bob has the
> sources handy.  I don't see a problem.


Sure.  But I could *really* piss a lot of people off if I removed 
libncurses5 and libncurses6 and released libncurses7 instead (and even 
moreso if I release "empty" libncurses5 and 6 packages to force the 
deletion of preexisting cygncurses5/6 DLLs).

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that ONLY the packages 
distributed by the cygwin mirror system matter -- even after all 
"official" packages have migrated to the new cygncurses7.dll, "external" 
progs still might require cygncurses6/5 for a while.

Just because it's possible for Bob to recompile "HMD" doesn't mean that 
we as maintainers should arbitrarily and needlessly force him to do so.


>>Perhaps you can release a new regex package that contains only the DLL, 
>>and not the development links.  However, this brings up the question: 
>>how long to we need to keep these old DLLs around to support (possible) 
>>user-compiled packages?
>>
>>E.g. when can the libreadline4 package be removed?  No existing *cygwin* 
>>package depends on it, but user-compiled stuff might...    Ditto 
>>"cygregex.dll".
>>
> 
> I'd think it's your decision for libreadline4.


Sure -- and I figure I'll keep it around for about 6 - 9 months. But 
I'll never release an empty "libreadline4" package -- that's just 
needless meddling with the user's system.


> libregex was always just a workaround.  Having regex functionality
> in libc (libcygwin) is what most people (and packages) expect.


Sure.  But Bob previously ported HMD to use -lregex, and now his binary 
requires cygregex.dll.  If he is distributing HMD (with sources, no GPL 
violations here) now he must immediately "un-port" and recompile -- 
because new users can't get cygregex.dll anymore.  I don't think we 
should be that dictatorial to folks who distribute derivative (but 
GPL-compliant) packages that piggyback off of cygwin.

To sum up: I think you should release "regex-4.4-3" that only contains 
/usr/bin/cygregex.dll -- and nothing else. (this guarantees that new 
packages cannot acquire a dependency on cygregex).  And then just let it 
sit for several months, so that the "Bob's" of the world have a 
reasonable amount of time to recompile their stuff.


--Chuck


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