hi to everybody quite a nice discussion we are having
my 2 cents (of euro) On Thu, Nov 15, 2001 at 09:58:59AM +1100, Robert Collins wrote: > Some of you here may recognise me - among other things I have just taken > on maintenance of cygwin's setup.exe, and have been a cygwin net > contributor for a while now. (Chris - how long exactly ?). > wow thanks for joining > 1) Replacing open files. Say that setup uses berkley db3 as a .dll. > Setup can not replace that .dll itself - and any dpkg/rpm style port > will assume that it can replace that .dll. I've made a beta release of > setup.exe that *can* do this, but it needs testing and work. disclaimer: I have never used cygwin inside windows; my experience with cygwin has been: I have cross compiled 'gtkmorph' , compiling it in Debian/GNU/Linux to work in win32 (and it works, although buggy); so I am not sure of what I am saying so here is a quick idea for the above: is it possible to rename an open file? if so, dpkg will just rename the files before installing a new copy of the same file from a .deb (some other program will then delete the old file when it is not in use anymore: you name a way...) > 2) Porting issues. Setup.exe is a win32 program, not a cygwin program. > It could dynamically open cygwin1.dll, once it's been installed, but the > core functionality, to grab packages off the net and install cygwin1.dll > in the correct place with the correct permissions has to be built in. > Thus any dpkg port that will bootstrap debian-w32 needs to be a native > win32 program, statically linked to any libraries, and able to bootstrap > itself to get any required .dll's. > > I think it would be a shame for users to have to bootstrap cygwin from > cygwin.com, and then grab a *different* installer for debian-w32. IMO > setup.exe should be a direct bootstrap. Also I think that maintaining a > separate tree of binaries and source does not make sense for Cygwin > today. There simply are not enough kernel developers or package > maintainers at this point. It would be great to see some of the debian > features and capabilities brought to the existing environment IMO. my vision of Debian/w32 is different in the future, when Debian/w32 will be a reality, there will be a file called Deboostrap.exe in the debian archive; the user will download this file and execute it: this file will ask where the user wishes to install Debian/w32, and then will selfextract from inside (more or less as the selfextracting archives do) a version base.tgz (Debian people know what it is) inside the above-asked directory; it will then setup virtual mounts, and proceed with normal Debian installation idem est: Deboostrap.exe will substitute the Debian boot diskettes, and the Debian/w32 installation will be the same as Debian/i386 after that Deboostrap.exe may even be just a dos program (in that case, it will ask 'where do you want to install debian (default C:\Debian)? ' from a text terminal); after it has unpacked, it will set up virtual mounts using an helper application; after that, Debian/w32 base system will be functional, and the package installation will be done from dselect (or whatever replacement we like more) > (Can you tell I'm walking a thin line here ?) (my english fails me...) a. -- A Mennucc "È un mondo difficile. Che vita intensa!" (Renato Carotone)
