On 2014-06-14 12:25-0400 David Cole wrote:
The difficulty of uninstalling it, and the difficulty of replicating a cygwin environment that is on one machine *exactly* on another machine with *all* the same components at *all* the same versions ... these are but 2 of the reasons I will NEVER rely on cygwin again for anything. It's just too painful, and there's absolutely NO upside.
Hi Dave: Why are you holding back so much from giving us your real opinion of Cygwin? :-) Seriously though, I wonder if some of your complaints have an answer. I don't have any experience with Cygwin myself (see below), however, if you used a unique install prefix for Cygwin, wouldn't it be a lot easier to uninstall? Also, your complaint concerning Cygwin consistency is probably well taken since it is a constantly upgraded so-called "rolling" distro (just like, e.g., Debian testing in that regard). But the day-to-day changes in Cygwin are small so if you used a script to update Cygwin on the same day for all your different machines, most likely you would get completely consistent results installed on all those machines. And then at that point I would leave it alone until you needed to do a consistent Cygwin upgrade on all your machines again. Also, I think it is important for Windows users to have access to Unix distributions (plural) of free software, where "Unix" refers to containing all the core command-line Unix tools that Unix developers know and love, and distribution is defined as a substantial body of software beyond those core tools that is built with a consistent set of (Unix) build tools. If you accept that premise, then Cygwin is a really important example of such a Unix distribution, and the only other competitors for it that I am aware of at the present moment on Windows platforms are (1) MinGW+MSYS (a much simplified fork of an ancient Cygwin version) and (2) MinGW_w64+MSYS2 (a much simplified fork of modern Cygwin). My only experience so far has only been with MinGW+MSYS. It does have a convenient automatic installer (see <http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Installer>, but MinGW+MSYS has a very limited set of free software libraries available so, for example, I find it necessary to build a lot of additional free software libraries to provide soft dependencies of PLplot that substantially enhance the power of PLplot. My opinion is that MinGW+MSYS days are numbered because MinGW_w64+MSYS2 reportedly fixes bugs much quicker (for example, the long-standing MSYS bug that makes parallel builds with the MSYS version of make unreliable), gives access to 64-bit versions of free software, and also has many additional free software libraries available compared to MinGW+MSYS. MSYS2 has an automatic installer that is based on the ArchLinux pacman (see <http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20installation/> and which is completely different than the MinGW+MSYS automatic installer. I currently cannot access either Cygwin or MinGW_w64+MSYS2 because I use the Wine version of the Windows platform, and that has at least two bugs that make it currently impossible to install Cygwin. The same two Wine bugs are also a showstopper for MinGW_w64+MSYS2 (presumably because of its similarities with modern Cygwin). However, my PLplot colleague has had virtually complete success with Cygwin. Furthermore, when he has more time I will also encourage him to try MinGW_w64+MSYS2 since apparently there are quite a few free software libraries that are available for that Windows distribution of Unix software. Dave, I well understand that since you have had trouble in the past with Cygwin it is all too easy for you to completely give up on it. But I thought I should add my own suggestions and feelings to balance yours for those here who would like to give Cygwin (or MinGW+MSYS or MinGW_w64+MSYS2) a try without being too affected by our different prejudices. :-) Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ -- Powered by www.kitware.com Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ Kitware offers various services to support the CMake community. For more information on each offering, please visit: CMake Support: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/support.html CMake Consulting: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/consulting.html CMake Training Courses: http://cmake.org/cmake/help/training.html Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe: http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/cmake
