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Re: ps -ef difference linux/cygwin (arguments)


On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 11:13 AM, William Sutton
> Let's try this one again, and maybe we can be civil instead of
> condescending and insulting?

Ahh.  You must be new here. :)

This has come up before; an archive search might save some repetition.
  But if I understand the argument properly, it's a question of
compatibility with scripts that expect the Cygwin ps to behave the way
it does.

The ps command has traditionally differed widely from implementation
to implementation  - the most glaring example being the BSD style
options (ps auxgww) vs the SysV style (ps -elf).  The modern Linux
command attempts to integrate both styles, plus a third innovated by
the GNU project, but the Cygwin ps command was already established as
its own animal by the time that happened.  (It also predates Cygwin's
branding as specifically Linuxlike as opposed to generically
Unixlike.)

So there are configure scripts, etc. that check to see if the system
is Cygwin and expect ps to behave in a certain way when it is.  Making
it act like Linux ps instead would break things, possibly lots of
things, possibly unmaintained things.

So instead, the procps(1) command is provided as an alternative for
users who want a Linuxlike ps command on Cygwin.

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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