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Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 16:04:09 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: discouraged
Message-ID: <20010903160409.A2850@redhat.com>
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I've tried to hold off sending this email but I thought it was
probably time to share.

I'm getting discouraged about the state of cygwin development.

Lately, this mailing list as devolved into a bug reporting mailing list.
There is little actual development or fixing going on.  Instead, there
standard message goes something like either

"I don't have time to track this down but my machine catches on fire
when I type 'ls'.  I'm just sending this message in case it helps
someone else."

or, slightly better variation 2:

"I noticed that typing 'pwd' deletes most of the files in my /tmp
directory.  So, I spent the last several days tracking this down.
Here's an strace of how it fails.  I really don't understand why it's
happening but I hope that someone else will understand it and be able to
fix it."

What I'm getting from all of this is that cygwin is just too complicated
for anyone besides me, Corinna, and Egor and Kazurhiro to understand.
If one of us isn't able to fix the problem, it just doesn't get fixed.

I don't know what to do about this.  It is getting so that I don't even
want to read this mailing list.  There is sure to be a bug here that someone
has found intractable.

I have to wonder how something like linux ever got off the ground.  These days
it seems like Linux Torvalds doesn't have to be the sole person who understands
how signals work.  There are a number of other people who understand the linux
kernel very well.

And, before everyone sends lots of speculation about why this is so wrt
cygwin, please don't bother.  I'm really not interested in theories of
behavior.  I'm just tired of doing it all myself.

I'm also not interested in hearing that it's all to hard because the code
is not commented or the algorithms are obscure.

cgf