I read the intro to msy2 on your wikipage. >"MSYS2 doesn't intend to compete with Cygwin or duplicate their >efforts."
It seems that the MSYS2 team is encouraging me to also install cygwin on my windows os alongside my MSYS2 installation. Is that what I should interpret from the above statement? Why should I have both msys2 and cygwin installed together? What's the benefit over simply installing msys2? I am confused because both msys2 and cygwin provide the gnu compiler collection helping linux developers to code just once and simply compile again for windows os'(32-bit or 64-bit) binaries. What lured me towards abandoning cygwin and adopting msys2: -user-friendliness of the msys2 package manager pacman facilitating installation of new msys2-derived linux apps/tools onto a windows os. I would have also loved to see pamac in msys2. pamac as a gui seems stronger when using it within arch/manjaro. When searching for packages, pacman has no search hits, but pamac has a few from other repos. It's probably a user problem(me) with pacman, but I believe I should get the same results pacman == pamac but it's not the case. -possibility of creating msys2-derived linux packages in an arch-linux style method, but targeting msys2/x86_64 rather than arch/x86_64. Haven't actually placed the effort to do this yet, but I plan to. -arch packages seem more recent. As a result msys2 packages seem more recent also. blender, inkscape, evince...wow! They weren't even in the cygwin repos last time I checked! -The cygwin setup.exe tool has always been a burden to navigate through because it's non-linux style gui. It doesn't provide any yum/apt/pacman tool to install it's cygwin-derived linux apps/tools onto a windows os. On a debian box, I sometimes prefer to use synaptic to look at the installed files for a package. Manjaro/Arch pamac behaves the same way. Fedora has similar guis for rpm packages, but if I recall correctly, cygwin was a redhat project; I'm surprised yum and rpm guis never made it to cygwin. TAKEN STRAIGHT FROM CYGWIN WEB SITE: "Q: Is there a command-line installer? The setup*.exe program understands command-line arguments which allow you to control its behavior and choose individual packages to install. While this provides some functionality similar to such tools as apt-get or yum it is not as full-featured as those packages. The basic reason for not having a more full-featured package manager is that such a program would need full access to all of Cygwin's POSIX functionality. That is, however, difficult to provide in a Cygwin-free environment, such as exists on first installation. Additionally, Windows does not easily allow overwriting of in-use executables so installing a new version of the Cygwin DLL while a package manager is using the DLL is problematic." The point here is once it is installed, it should be able to provide yum/apt/pacman-like features and find the circumventions necessary to update itself in its entirety instead of saying something silly like "no we can't do that dave because windows doesn't allow you to over-write an in-use executable." FIGURE IT OUT. Kill the process, do a windows timer event(AT) that calls a windows powershell/command prompt that kills/uninstalls and reinstalls. IMHO, when the environment's package installer doesn't have enough smarts to update itself in windows, that's a subtlety saying perhaps they need to place more effort in the cygwin installer to catch up with pacman/pamac. CONCLUSION: MSYS2 is ahead in this regard. running setup.exe sucks when you're used to running apt/yum/pacman. I have my priorities elsewhere unfortunately, but perhaps by voicing an opinion somebody at cygwin might listen. If not, that's to msys2's advantage because more people will start to adopt msys2 instead of cygwin. Hats off to the MSYS2 team! Cheers On 03/07/2015 04:13 PM, David Macek wrote: > A new wikipage is up: > https://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20introduction/ > > Comments are appreciated. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored > by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all > things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to > news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the > conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > Msys2-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msys2-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Msys2-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msys2-users
