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Re: FAQ suggestion


On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 01:25:36PM -0400, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:31 PM:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 03:24:33PM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>> On Mar 18 21:47, Dan Kegel wrote:
>>>> --- snip ---
>>>> 
>>>> 9. Deploying Cygwin
>>>> 
>>>> 9.1  I want to bundle Cygwin with a product, and ship it to customer
>>>> sites.  How can I do this without conflicting with any Cygwin
>>>> installed by the user? 
>>>> 
>>>> A.  Third party developers who wish to use Cygwin should check if
>>>> there is a version of cygwin installed and use the installed version
>>>> if it is newer, or conditionally upgrade if it is not.
>>>> (If you write a tool to make this easy, consider contributing it to
>>>> cygwin for others to use.) 
>>>> 
>>>> 9.2 Can I bundle Cygwin with my product for free?
>>>> 
>>>> A. Only if you comply with Cygwin's license very carefully.
>>>> If you choose to distribute cygwin1.dll, you must also distribute
>>>> the exact source code used to build that copy of cygwin1.dll.
>>>> If you ship applications that link with cygwin1.dll, you must either
>>>> provide those applications' source code under a GPL-compatible
>>>> license, *or* purchase a cygwin license from Red Hat.
>>>> 
>>>> 9.3.  Can I install a private version of cygwin that doesn't
>>>> conflict with the system cygwin (in the same way that multiple
>>>> versions of Wine can coexist)? 
>>>> 
>>>> A. The Cygwin maintainers will resist any suggestion to support
>>>> this, no matter how sensible it might sound to you, because they
>>>> feel strongly that the only supportable situation is for everybody
>>>> to use the same cygwin instance, and for it to be as up to date as
>>>> possible. 
>>>> 
>>>> 9.4. But doesn't that mean that if some application installs an
>>>> older Cygwin library than my system had, my application will break?
>>>> 
>>>> A. Yes.  If you run into such an application, uninstall it, point
>>>> the author to this FAQ, and try to get them to follow the cygwin
>>>> deployment rules. 
>>>> 
>>>> --- snip ---
>>>> 
>>>> Is that getting closer?
>>> 
>>> That's quite close, especially the answer to 9.3 :) Care to create a
>>> matching docbook entry for the FAQ?
>> 
>> Actually, I think 9.3 suggests a disagreement and hints at a point of
>> view from the FAQ writer.  Also, what does Wine have to do with
>> anything?  Wine is a Linux package.  
>> 
>>                          * * *
>> 
>> 9.3.  Can I install a private version of the Cygwin DLL that doesn't
>> conflict with the system cygwin? 
>> 
>> You can have two different versions of the Cygwin DLL installed on
>> your system at the same time but they must be run serially.  This
>> means that you can't be running programs using both versions of
>> Cygwin at the same time.  Please be aware that currently both
>> versions will use the same mount table entries although this may
>> change in the future.     
>> 
>> 9.4. But doesn't that mean that if some application installs an older
>> Cygwin library than my system had, my application will break? 
>> 
>> It depends on what you mean by "break".  If the application installs
>> a version of the Cygwin DLL in another location than Cygwin's /bin
>> directory then the rules in 9.3 apply.  If the application installs
>> an older version of the DLL in /bin then you should complain loudly
>> to the application provider.    
>> 
>> Remember that the Cygwin DLL strives to be backwards compatible so a
>> newer version of the DLL should always work with older executables. 
>> So, in general, it is always best to keep one version of the DLL on
>> your system and it should always be the latest version which matches
>> your installed distribution.    
>> 
>>                          * * *
>> 
>> Unless there are clarifications needed to the above, I can check this
>> in. 
>> 
>> Thanks for the words, Dan.
>> 
>> cgf
>
>Possible Clarification: 
>> Remember that the Cygwin DLL strives to be backwards compatible so a
>> newer version of the DLL should always work with older executables. 
>What about compatibility for Win 9x/Me when version 1.5 => 1.7?

When we actually release 1.7 we'll need to add more words all over the
FAQ.  Most likely, we'll need to add a whole section on this since it
is a big departure from previous releases.

cgf

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