John, in message <000501c24979$6348a190$37d34c93 at neca.nec.com.au> you wrote: > > So what are the issues: How is cygwin significantly different from Linux > that you would not want to use it?
First, you may run into compatibility issues. It is a non-trivial task to create a set of tools that will run on more than one combination of versions of Cygwin and Windoze: a product that works for Cygwin under Windows 2000 may fail if attempted to run on Windows NT, let alone Windows 98. Different versions of Cygwin may even have different layout of the C header files. Second, many packages need for their build process a couple of UNIX tools which are not available on Cygwin. For example: localedef, mktemp, rpcgen and others. Finally, you will probably run into problems with NFS support on Windows hosts. I'm not sure that you can really create a filesystem on a Windows box which preserves all the information required for a LInux root filesystem, so that you can actually export if over NFS for your targets (think about issues like symbolic and hard links, owners, groups, sticky bit [for /tmp], setuid / setgid bits, device files, ...). > Are there useful tools that run under Linux but not under cygwin? Yes. > The reason I ask is that my organization currently does its software > development under windows using proprietary tools. We have to maintain our > existing products using these tools. We are however contemplating new > development using linux. If we have to dual boot our PCs or have an extra PC > running Linux for each developer, that is going to bring its own set of > nuisances and problems. There are several solutions. First, and recommended, you can install one of a couple of Linux servers. It is trivial to make these resources available to your developers on Windoze hosts. You don't have to install a new Linux PC for every developer. Remember that UNIX has a long tradition in using dumb clients (like VT100 terminals or X11 clients); a windows box fits nicely into this ;-) If you still think this is not an option, you don;t have to dual-boot to use both environments on the same machine. For example, Lineo uses (used?) vmware to provide a (hidden) Linux box running under Windows to provide a Linux development environment on Windows systems - you can do the same. > Are there others in this situation and how have they chosen to solve it? Of course there is also the more radical approach: install Linux on all your Windoze boxen, and save a lot of money on M$ licenses ;-) Wolfgang Denk -- Software Engineering: Embedded and Realtime Systems, Embedded Linux Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87 Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88 Email: wd at denx.de The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. - James Baldwin ** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
