Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist X-Debbugs-CC: sk...@debian.org * Package name: cygwin * URL : http://cygwin.com * License : LGPL Programming Lang: C, C++ Description : library and headers providing POSIX functionality on Windows
As an alternative to MinGW, Cygwin is much more useful for those porting software on Windows. At its core, it's a fork of Newlib that provides POSIX functionality on top of the Windows API so that POSIX software can be ported with little to no change. In effect, it's the opposite of Winelib. Cygwin needs MinGW to be built, and building a toolchain on one's own is difficult to do from scratch. A Debian package with just the core library would be helpful to enable providing cross compilers later on. I'm somewhat familiar with Cygwin, but find the lack of a cross compiler very inconvenient. It can be run under Wine—its main audience is for use under Windows—but relying on their opaque unbootstrappable binary with the hassle of a separate Wine prefix for dependencies makes this a great deal of trouble. Although there are compatibility libraries like Gnulib to try and bridge the gap, I know of no other project that provides such complete POSIX and even Linux-specific functionality, even when it challenges the capabilities of Windows (e.g. providing symbolic links). I won't be able to maintain it at least until I get my noggin wrapped around how it's built—bootstrappability is low on their list of priorities, although it reportedly can be done—but this adds more to the value of a Debian package that can get it right. To reduce duplication, MinGW binaries can usually be built passing an argument to the compiler to omit linking to the Cygwin DLL. Thus a Cygwin compiler may fill in the role of a MinGW one as well. A good start for me would probably be investigating how the MinGW packages are built. I've CC'd the maintainer of the MinGW packages, should he have any remarks.
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