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Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 14:23:25 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs.  Semantic path analysis
Message-ID: <20030110192325.GA28458@redhat.com>
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References: <1042100310 DOT 8869 DOT 344 DOT camel AT lifelesslap> <006c01c2b82d$55dd70d0$1403a8c0 AT sc DOT tlinx DOT org> <3E1F113F DOT 1080002 AT cotagesoft DOT com>
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On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 10:30:23AM -0800, Shankar Unni wrote:
>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?

Like me, for instance?  I came onboard in '98 and talked to most of the
initial developers who had eventually stampeded away from the (to them)
distasteful duty of working on Windows.  I'd been involved with cygwin
(aka gnu-win32) since early '97.

>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..

Posix paths were one of the main reasons for cygwin.  The goal was to to
modify tools like gcc and make as little as possible so that Cygnus
could have a Windows toolchain but not force tool developers to deal
with modifying every line of code which assumed that '/foo' meant "the
file foo in the root directory" rather than "the file foo at the root
directory of the current drive" or "the foo option".

I've been managing support for cygwin and have had to answer the "Why
doesn't gcc deal with my c:\include paths very well" questions for
years now.  Most people get the concept once it is explained to them.
YMMV.

So, anyway, fork, exec, and posix paths were the main motivations for
cygwin.  Once I came onboard, you could add signals to that list, too.

But, hey, if you don't believe me, then maybe Larry Hall has more
credibility.  He's been around longer than I.

cgf

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