On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 06:29:02PM +0200, Ronald Landheer-Cieslak wrote: > On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 10:59:24AM -0400, Sam Steingold wrote: > > $ ls /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/ | wc -l > > 41 > > $ cygcheck -c | wc -l > > 206 > > so only 20% of packages supply this cygwin-specific README. > You forgot the ones in /usr/doc/Cygwin - but that doesn't matter: the fact > that not all packages have their own README (which is partly explained by > there being multiple packages derived from one source - e.g. [lib]pcre*) > doesn't mean it is any less mandatory - the maintainers should fix this (which > apparenly includes me, BTW, as my pcre-4.4-README is in the wrong place - will > be fixed with the next release).
I was interested in what packages don't have these so I figured it out. I only have around 100 packages installed so YMMV. But it is clear from this list that a lot of these packages are maintained by Chris, Chuck, and Corinna, which made me think that the README is in fact optional. Then I looked at cygwin.com/setup.html and it looks like mostly it says "any README" (i.e., include one if necessary), except with this paragraph: In your binary package, include a file /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/foo-vendor-suffix.README containing (at a minimum) the information needed for an end user to recreate the package. This includes CFLAGS settings, configure parameters, etc. Now, I propose that if the package builds OOTB with the settings from cygwin.com/setup.html, you can skip the README, but it is still recommended to have a README. Also it would be nice to note in the README what packages you need for compiling (gcc, make, perl, gettext, etc.) to avoid downloading the source only to have to go back and download libintl27-devel or something. My list of no-README packages: _update-info-dir ash base-files base-passwd bash clear diff diffutils ed file fileutils findutils gawk gcc gcc-mingw gettext-devel ghostscript-base grep groff gzip less libbz2_1 libcharset1 libdb3.1 libgdbm-devel libgdbm3 libgdbm4 libgettextpo0 libiconv2 libintl libintl1 libintl2 libjpeg62 libjpeg6b libkpathsea3 libkpathsea3abi13 libncurses libncurses-devel libncurses5 libncurses6 libncurses7 libpcre libpcre0 libpng12 libpopt0 libreadline4 libreadline5 libtiff libtiff-devel libtiff3 libtiff4 lynx make man mingw mingw-runtime mingw-zlib newlib-man openssl096 patch pcre-doc sed sgml sgml-base sh-utils tar termcap tetex-bin tetex-tiny texinfo textutils vim w32api which
