RE: autoconf in pure MSVC environment?

[Daniel Reed]

On 2004-09-07T13:15-0700, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
) works ok on UNIX because the tools are getting built, tested, and
) updated all the time.  That testing never happens on Windows, so to
) quote Chinua Achebe, "Things Fall Apart."

If there is a specific issue with a specific Cygwin package, please either
bring it up with the package maintainer or bring it up on one of the two
Cygwin mailing lists where this would be relevant (cygwin@ or
address@hidden).



As a data point, much of the core Cygwin "kernel" work *is* done on Linux
and is assembled through cross-compilation.

However, individual packages are maintained by independent contributors, and
these maintainers do use the software they package on a daily basis. (And,
by necessity, also use the Cygwin kernel on a daily basis.)

Before a package can be added to Cygwin, it must be voted on by existing
package maintainers, and must be reviewed for correct packaging and
functionality. Additionally, one of the requirements for being a Cygwin
package maintainer is the following of the cygwin-apps@ mailing list, and
its discussions that are relevant your packages.

If you have any specific problems with Cygwin development tools, please
bring them up on the cygwin@ mailing list. If you have any specific problems
with Cygwin's packaging, please bring them up on the address@hidden
mailing list.

Cygwin almost certainly is the correct long-term answer to your problem.
Modifying the autotools to support non-UNIX-like environments, where
standard tools like awk, cut, and sed may not be available, would be work
outside of the autotools' scope. Either the functionality of these core
components would need to be duplicated, or these components would need to be
made available in the non-UNIX-like environment. The former duplicates the
effort used to write the tools and standardize their use; the latter
duplicates the work put into systems like Cygwin.

-- 
Daniel Reed <address@hidden>    http://people.redhat.com/djr/   
http://naim.n.ml.org/
The open source world considers many of its large projects as benevolent
dictatorships. It's a democracy only in the sense that cyberspace is
infinite so anyone who doesn't like it can move out. -- Alan Cox