X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
From: "William Sheehan" <william DOT sheehan AT openinterface DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: 3.81 and windows paths
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:31:53 -0700
Message-ID: <008e01c6b1cc$76021310$280aa8c0@oius.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; 	charset="us-ascii"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.6626
In-Reply-To: <20060727221136.GD6653@trixie.casa.cgf.cx>
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cygwin-unsubscribe-archive-cygwin=delorie DOT com AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id k6RMW7fm005578

> There is no advantage using cygwin if you want to use a Makefile which
contains
> MS-DOS paths.  Using MinGW makes perfect sense in that case.

I strongly disagree with this statement.  A primary benefit of using Cygwin
is that so many Linux-like tools are available from one central installer.
If you have a Makefile system that uses Cygwin for more than just the make
binary and binutils (aka more than what MinGW provides), it becomes
irritating to developers that they need to install at least two software
products (Cygwin and MinGW in this case) and create special path voodoo just
for one product.

I can imagine that the immediate response to this complaint will be "fix
your Makefiles to work with Cygwin if it's such an important component."  As
others have mentioned, this is no simple task in very large Makefile systems
that support a wide variety of compilation toolchains.  Cygwin make has
supported Win32 paths for a long time, so much that I would say that people
have come to rely on it.  I am not saying that the changes are impossible;
just that it is a larger inconvenience than some may realize.

William Sheehan
Builds Engineer / Network Administrator
Open Interface North America



--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/