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Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 11:27:45 -0400
From: "Lee D. Rothstein" <lee AT veritech DOT com>
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To: Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: I'd like to add and mantain a new pacakge: nix
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Marc Weber wrote:

 > I've read the "how to contribute a new package" on the faq and
 > started writing the cygport file.
 > It was easy.
 >
 > The distfiles which I've created this way can be found on
 > http://mawercer.de/dist
 >
 > Which is the recommended way of testing them?
 > tar xfj -C / nix*.tar.bz2 ?
 >
 > Sincerly
 > Marc Weber

I am totally unqualified to answer your questions. However, I did
look at elements of your package components because I am curious
about being a Cygwin developer/maintainer, and I have been
struggling for some time to figure out how to improved Cygwin/GNU
documentation/help.

With that fan-less-fare (;-)), I make the following observations:

 * The hint file is not complete and appears to be some kind of
   gag?
  
 * It would be quite helpful, if there was a "NIX Intro" 'man' page
   that gave the function of the package that I could only find
   described in the Cygport file. This page would also point out
   the components of the package much the same way that 'man perl'
   does, but on the relatively smaller scale of 'nix'.
  
 * It would also be helpful, if the '.TH' description for each
   man page was more functionally descriptive.
  
 * I believe this description is what goes into the 'whatis'
   database that is used by both 'whatis' and 'apropos', and
   that, in particular, is what makes the two above points
   important, IMHO. (It is this oversight which annoys me about
   the NetPBM package, for example.)
  
 * I believe that such changes would make your package more
   accessible, and therefore more popular, but, as I've already
   said, I'm unqualified to judge.

Having made all the criticisms, I must say that I was overjoyed
to see the extent of the 'man' pages.

(My personal belief is that 'info' causes cancer in chickens, and
no reason to involve these sacrificial birds in the GNUish
documentation wars. ;-) )

Were you intending your package manager to be used for
maintaining parallel Cygwin 1.5/1.7 configurations?



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