Re: #1782: Reduce number of Windows configurations by removing Cygwin support

[elf]

John:

Your first two criticisms are not correct.

WSL does work on 64-bit Win7.

Cygwin requires admin to install, at least every time I've installed it.

Let's also add that MS itself no longer supports any 32 bit configurations and 
that Win7 has been out of support now for over five years.

That said: Chicken on Cygwin suffers from some significant problems - my commit 
history in C3 and C4 had a lot to do with these issues - but I still don't 
think that cutting it out entirely is a good idea, at least not yet. Perhaps 
deprecate it slowly?

-elf

On 2 August 2022 23:36:44 GMT+03:00, Chicken Trac <mario.goulart@gmail.com> 
wrote:
>#1782: Reduce number of Windows configurations by removing Cygwin support
>-----------------------------------------+--------------------
>            Reporter:  felix winkelmann  |      Owner:  (none)
>                Type:  task              |     Status:  new
>            Priority:  major             |  Milestone:  5.4
>           Component:  build system      |    Version:  5.2.0
>          Resolution:                    |   Keywords:
>Estimated difficulty:  easy              |
>-----------------------------------------+--------------------
>
>Comment (by johnwcowan):
>
> There are a few reasons why WSL does not replace Cygwin, roughly in
> decreasing order of importance to me:
>
> 1. Cygwin can be installed on almost any Windows system from Windows 7
> onwards on either 32-bit or 64-bit machines; WSL works only on 64-bit
> Windows 10 or 11.
>
> 2. Cygwin can be installed with or without admin privilege; WSL requires
> privilege.  This is important if you want Chicken on a corporate machine,
> where you probably aren't going to have privilege.
>
> 3. Cygwin's access to the filesystem is a few percent slower than native
> Windows.  In WSL1, the "Linux" part of the filesystem is less performant;
> in WSL2, the "Windows native" part of the filesystem is much less
> performant.
>
> 4. Cygwin binaries can be shipped to any Windows user as long as
> cygwin1.dll goes along with them.  (This DLL used to be GPL but is now
> LGPL.)  WSL binaries are just Linux binaries, and require either Linux or
> WSL installed at the destination.
>
> 5. WSL does not interoperate with VirtualBox, because they use
> incompatible hypervisor technology.  (MS is working on this, but it's a
> big deal.)
>
> 6.  Cygwin applications have access to a subset of the Linux API, the
> WinNT supervisor API, and the Win32 or Win64 API.  WSL applications have
> access only to the Linux API.
>
>-- 
>Ticket URL: <https://bugs.call-cc.org/ticket/1782#comment:2>
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