Message-ID: <4C40CA42.7020607@bopp.net>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:08:18 -0500
From: Jeremy Bopp <jeremy AT bopp DOT net>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Minimal setup to build apps from source?
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On 7/16/2010 2:15 PM, Monte Cabet wrote:
> "xorg-server" and "xinit" aren't required, but only thing I got to work
> with Cygwin. I have to be honest, I don't know how to use Git, CVS, or
> even Subversion; but I know some things require them so I added them!
> Gzip and Bzip2 are both installed by default (I didn't post the entire
> list as it's getting big because I'm trying to figure out the
> requirements for gnash - some of the requirements can't be found.).

The people to ask about the build time requirements of gnash are the
gnash developers, not the Cygwin list.  You might be lucky and find
someone who can help you here, but the list is for discussing Cygwin
itself.  More than likely, no one here will really know what gnash
requires, or what any random project's sources require to build for that
matter.

Assuming the gnash developers can't help you out, it sounds like you
might be jumping in a bit deep given your experience level.  Have you
ever built something from sources before?  You would probably find the
fewest problems and the best experience using whatever platforms the
gnash developers use daily.

> I'm not familiar with RPM(there deb/apt-get for cygwin?), but would that
> help build stuff? Say you find an rpm of firefox, would that find all
> the necessary requirements and install along with firefox (If that's
> really what happens)?

Cygwin uses setup.exe for all package management.  There are some other
apt-like tools out there, but they are not supported by the Cygwin
developers.

If you use setup.exe to select a package for installation, all of that
package's run time dependencies will also be selected and installed;
however, you won't find something like RPMs or DEBs for Cygwin floating
around like you can for RedHat and Debian.  Even if there were such
packages though, they typically list only the run time requirements, and
those requirements are not necessarily the same as build time requirements.

Given something like gnash, your best resources for how to build are the
source, documentation included with the source, online documentation (if
any), and whatever forum the maintainers of the package use for
communication (IRC, email, wikis, etc.).

> I guess I'd like to make Cygwin as close to an actual linux install as I
> can (a step before I fully commit to linux).

There's no need to fully commit to Linux to the exclusion of anything
else before giving Linux a try.  You're free to install both Windows and
Linux in a dual boot configuration or even run one in a virtual machine
running on the other.  Try VirtualBox or VMWare.  Both have free
versions for Windows.

There are a lot of potential gotchyas when using Cygwin as a stand-in
for Linux, so if you want to do things with Linux and if you have the
option to do so without much effort, you might be better off skipping
Cygwin for now and learning Linux directly.  Come back to Cygwin when
you *have* to use Windows and want to ease the pain by using a Unix-like
environment where possible. ;-)

Just my $0.02.

-Jeremy

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