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Subject: RE: change in behavior of make from 3.80 to 3.81
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:05:07 -0400
Message-ID: <400BDC416E2A0042AA35DF3919BB8A514D46DC@mail.mtl.proksim.com>
In-Reply-To: <20060816200428.GA27256@calimero.vinschen.de>
From: "Olivier Langlois" <olanglois AT quazal DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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Hi Corinna,
> 
> This has nothing to do with Cygwin's development process.  Cygwin is a
> POSIX environment after all.  It's one of if's design targets to get
rid
> of the DOS paths.  People using Cygwin with DOS paths are using Cygwin
> for something it was not designed for.  This whole complaint comes up
> because people are using Cygwin in a non-standard way.  I'm wondering
> why nobody complains that Linux doesn't understand drive letters.
> 
> > you are expressing is understandable to me. However, with a little
> > managerial effort on your part, you could use your knowledge (if you
so
> > choose) to help the rest of us organize a productive way to develop
a
> > patch to the upstream make. I thought Corinna spoke very well on
this
> > matter, and is why I even bothered responding to this list.
> 
> Maybe you got me wrong.  I have a very strange feeling about getting
> told my point of view would be right, while in the same sentence
you're
> kicking cgf's ass.  Just for the records: My design goals for Cygwin
> are that it works fine as a POSIX environment, not that it works fine
> to run DOS tools.  That's a nice side-effect at best.

It seems to me that cygwin design goals have changed recently otherwise
if offering a POSIX environment while coexisting nicely with DOS tools
was not one of the legacy cygwin design goal, how comes this
feature/behavior has been included for so many years in cygwin? How
about backward compatibility as a design goal? Backward compatibility is
a nice design goal, you know.
> 
> Whatever the outcome of this make problem, I fully agree to what Chris
> said in his previous mail.  This discussion is enormously frustrating.
> There are solutions available, but everybody just keeps repeating how
> bad everything got.  And on top of that we get told how evil our point
> of view about how to use Cygwin is.  Maybe you should reevaluate what
> Cygwin is designed for instead of trying to strangle Cygwin in some
> other direction.

Nobody is trying to strangle Cygwin in some other direction. People are
asking to keep a behaviour that has been present for years. People came
to get used to that and to rely on it. What kind of reactions from users
did you expect by breaking a lot of systems by doing such a change?
People are just asking you to not reevaluate what Cygwin was designed
for in the first place as you say.

You know, I understand that you are some kind of project lead for
Cygwin. At the end, you have the final word and you can do whatever you
want with the project. There is no need to discuss with users if you do
not want to. What users find frustrating, I think, is the lack of
transparency from the Cygwin decisional staff. Saying to people that
they have no clue about what Cygwin should be or that they complain like
4 years old kids does not help anything. On the other hand, if you admit
that one of Cygwin design goal used to be to offer some DOS support but
that you decided to change the project direction to a purer POSIX
environment, some users will be happy, some others will be unhappy but
at least expectations will be set right.

Greetings,
Olivier Langlois
http://www.olivierlanglois.net


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