From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) Date: 2001-10-03T03:12:03+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:21954] Re: Let's work on Windows support In article <20011002014323.C99550@codedogs.ca>, Eli Green wrote: >from Phil Tomson on 2001-10-02 at 11:31:04: >> In article <20011001192708.A89625@codedogs.ca>, >> Eli Green wrote: >> >from Sean Chittenden on 2001-10-02 at 01:32:16: >> > >> >APR isn't in a state where it's recommended for use as a shared library yet, >> >so static linking would be the way to go for the time being. So while we'd be >> >adding a dependency to APR, we'd be getting rid of the dependency of Cygwin, >> >and it could be bundled as one InstallShield executable. >> > >> >> Would giving up cygwin for APR just be swapping for another set of >> problems? > >Yes. However, we'd be swapping a band-aid solution (I've never spoken to >anybody who has been 100% satisfied with Cygwin) for something that is likely >to be much more robust and well-tested. As I just stated in my e-mail to Mr. >Chittenden, Apache 2.0 is already serving www.apache.org, and is likely to see >VERY heavy use and testing. I personally like the idea. However, I have no >evidence that APR is ACTUALLY better than Cygwin, and I'm often wrong about >things. :) > But isn't Apache run mainly on Linux (and other *nix) platforms? Is there much use of Apache on Windows? Is Cygwin not actively developed anymore? Seems that it's now under the RedHat umbrella - do they not have someone in charge of developing it? One path we could take would be to try to contact the cygwin development folks with a set of problems we believe to be caused by cygwin. We need to identify these problem areas anyway so that we can have a test suite used to determine if we've actually fixed anything regardless of which course we take. We should still work on alternatives to cygwin in case the cygwin (RedHat) folks are not responsive (and I think that ultimately its best if we control this aspect of the code so that if problems arise someone(s) in the Ruby community can fix it quickly). BTW: I just checked http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ the latest cygwin DLL 1.3.3 was released on Sept 12, 2001 so somebody appears to be working on it. Why not compile a list of issues that seem to be caused by cygwin and submit it to them? BTW(2): they have a link to Ruby 1.6.5 and a little blurb about it on the cygwin page at the above link. Phil