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Subject: RE: strace on inetd (was RE: bash failed to initialize on telnet/rsh/ rlogin server)
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Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:01:25 +1100
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From: "Robert Collins" <robert DOT collins AT itdomain DOT com DOT au>
To: "Matt Seitz" <mseitz AT snapserver DOT com>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Seitz [mailto:mseitz AT snapserver DOT com] 
> Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 12:32 PM

> > If we had better documentation why would it be hidden?
> 
> I'm sure Cygwin tries to include the best possible 
> documentation.  But if someone can't find an answer in the 
> official docs, it seems to me that asking for other sources 
> is the right thing to do.  For any number of reasons, there 
> may be other sources of information that are not yet included 
> in the official Cygwin documentation.

If Cygwin was a corporate project, then that would be true. However,
it's not -IMO- a corporate project. Few, if any resources are allotted
to Cygwin by RedHat. Of the folk who commit code to cygwin, only Corinna
and Chris are RedHat employees, and AFAIK neither are
paid-to-develop-cygwin.

For a community project, there are few-if-any reasons for doco to be
pending. It usually gets posted immediately, as that is the only way we
get recognition.
 
> > The best documentation is the source code.
> 
> That depends on one's definition of "best".  Source is 
> certainly the most accurate documentation, but it is probably 
> not the easiest to use.

That's a very valid comment. However, IIRC you didn't define the metric
of 'betterness' that you meant, so I think that Chris assuming
better==accurate is quite reasonable.
 
> I'm sure the Cygwin developers are very busy and don't have a 
> lot of time to offer free end-user support, especially since 
> Cygwin does offer paid support options.  

As I mention above... what Cygwin developers :}. Seriously though, while
busy with other things, I usually still spend time on support, offering
insights to new contributors, offering sarcasm to newbies <wince>,
contributing bits of code... 

> And I do see a 
> number of helpful articles posted by Cygwin developers.  But 
> occasionally I'm surprised at how hostile some answers are to 
> what seem to be reasonable questions and requests.

I can't really comment on the other developers, but I find some
behaviours (net shown by you AFAICT) very frustrating.
* evidence of a lack of self-start-capability. (i.e. where do I find x,
for some x documented on the web pages or high up on google searches)
* 'it would be nice'. Particularly 'why doesn't x get improved'.
* 'cygwin is broken'... when it passes the ltp test suite for that
feature.

Rob

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