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Message-ID: <3B8C2682.DE851E18@ece.gatech.edu>
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 19:17:22 -0400
From: Charles Wilson <cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
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To: Ralf Habacker <Ralf DOT Habacker AT freenet DOT de>
CC: Cygwin-Apps <cygwin-apps AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Updated setup.ini with descriptions, categories, and dependencies
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Ralf Habacker wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> has anybody thinked about the cygipc package, which is needed by kde ? Should
> this be integrated and if so in which category ?
> 

This has been mentioned with respect to postgresql and kde. 
Unfortunately, the answer is: "nothing we can do".  That particular
dependency will remain "off book" (kinda like Social Security in the US
-- it's "real", but it doesn't "count")

The problem is basically that the best is the enemy of the good (or in
this case, the merely adequate).

The Right Thing To Do is to add full IPC support to cygwin itself. 
There are a few folks thinking about this issue, and what it will
require.  Among them: a streamlined daemon starter (cygrunsrv...), a
daemon to manage permissions and the shared objects themselves (Egor's
"cygwin daemon"?), and *a complete rewrite of IPC code without reference
to cygipc*.  (This has to do with licensing issues; the original authors
of cygipc retain copyright, and seem to have disappeared -- therefore,
we can't contact them to encourage them to assign copyright to Cygnus. 
Ergo, the existing cygipc code can't be directly incorporated into
Cygwin itself.  (Worse, anybody who has studied the cygipc code is
disqualified from contributing or working on a re-implementation for
cygwin1.dll)

Now, we could just add cygipc as regular package (e.g. not part of
cygwin1.dll).  But...

then there's less pressure/desire/need to do The Right Thing.  The
decision was made a long time ago NOT to add cygipc as a package, and to
work toward The Right Thing.

Unfortunately, progress on that front has been slow.  If someone other
than me is willing to take over maintaining cygipc, then perhaps it is
time to revisit that decision, and evaluate whether The Right Thing
(adding IPC functionality to cygwin1.dll itself) is *ever* going to
actually happen.

If not, (assuming someone else will maintain it) then perhaps we should
include cygipc as a package.

--Chuck