Re: [HEADSUP] Base category

[Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa dot com>]

On Dec 10, 2014, at 4:05 AM, Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:

>> It boggles my mind how much is in the Cygwin package repository, and
>> then how much more is in Ports.  To some extent, this has to be a
>> reflection of Sturgeon’s Law. [2]
> 
> Isn't that the same for all distros?  Cygwin has just a few thousand
> packages, Linux distros have 10s of thousands.

I just re-did the count, and I get 4,453 for the Cygwin official repo (x86) plus another 6,556 in Ports.

My point, though, is that I’m surprised Cygwin is even in this space.  Back when I started with Cygwin, it was little more than a POSIX.1 userland.

I understand “nonstandard” additions like ssh, rsync, a basic X server, lots of libraries, and lots of development tools.  What I don’t understand is WindowMaker, KDE, music notation software, etc.  It seems to me that a lot of this is best left to Windows proper, or native apps for it.

Of course I don’t need to understand it.  It’s someone’s itch, and it pleases them to help Cygwin out by scratching it.

>> I only have VMs now.  I’ll probably be fading
>> from the Cygwin scene as a consequence.
> 
> Oh well.  I'm running Windows in VMs only for years and I still didn't
> disappear from the project :}

It’s a bit different for you, isn’t it?  For you, it’s a key part of your employment.  For me, it’s been a means to an end, while I waited for the computing world to change enough that I could get off Windows.

It’s not that I don’t want to continue helping with Cygwin, but that it’s no longer a thing I use often.

> I'm sorry to read that.  In fact I had hoped you would be willing to
> look a bit more into the documentation again, after you so kindly pulled
> it into the 21st century last year.  There's certainly still much room
> for improvement.

I kind of thought I’d been kicked off that project, after leaving the autodep stuff hanging. :)

Point me at a problem area.  If it annoys me enough, I will be motivated to fix it.

As for your new nsswitch type docs, the first pass still needs to be done by you, or whoever knows what’s going on.  But, I can still make a cleanup pass on it.