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From: "lhall AT pop DOT ma DOT ultranet DOT com" <lhall AT pop DOT ma DOT ultranet DOT com>
To: shankar AT cotagesoft DOT com, cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs.  Semanticpath analysis
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:48:49 -0500
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Original Message:
-----------------
>From: Shankar Unni shankar AT cotagesoft DOT com
>Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 10:30:23 -0800
>To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
>Subject: Re: Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs. 
>Semanticpath analysis
>
>
>linda w (cyg) wrote:
>
>> 	What were the _original_ design goals of Cygwin -- i.e. as 
>> sponsored by "RedHat"?
>
>Cygwin predates RedHat. See http://cygwin.com/history.html  (the 
>earliest date in the file is Dec 1995). RedHat bought Cygnus Solutions 
>(which was a shop for commercial support for GNU software, especially 
>GCC ports to obscure and new platforms), which did the original Cygwin
work.
>
>Anyone at RedHat from the original Cygwin team (the last warriors of the 
>(in)famous "Beta 20" :-)?) wanna answer this?
>
>There's an interesting line in the early changelogs:
>
>    Release Beta 8
>    [...]
>    Much nicer way of describing paths, eg //c/foo is c:\foo.
>
>Suggests that the early goal *was* to provide a POSIX-y view, and the 
>exposing of Windows paths was added as a convenience..

Bingo!  I didn't start using Cygwin until B13 but that's always been my
understanding of the goals for Cygwin.  POSIX/Unix compatibility first,
Windows conveniences where it doesn't inhibit the former.  Perhaps the
early maintainers of Cygwin might have a different view but this is 
definitely in-line with the original internal (Cygnus) goals of an 
environment for Windows which could be used to port the GNU Pro product 
suite.

I swore I wasn't going to step into the middle of this discussion! ;-)
Oh well.

Larry

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