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Re: Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs. Semanticpath analysis
- From: "lhall at pop dot ma dot ultranet dot com" <lhall at pop dot ma dot ultranet dot com>
- To: shankar at cotagesoft dot com, cygwin at cygwin dot com
- Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:48:49 -0500
- Subject: Re: Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs. Semanticpath analysis
- Reply-to: lhall at rfk dot com
Original Message:
-----------------
>From: Shankar Unni shankar@cotagesoft.com
>Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 10:30:23 -0800
>To: cygwin@cygwin.com
>Subject: Re: Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs.
>Semanticpath analysis
>
>
>linda w (cyg) wrote:
>
>> What were the _original_ design goals of Cygwin -- i.e. as
>> sponsored by "RedHat"?
>
>Cygwin predates RedHat. See http://cygwin.com/history.html (the
>earliest date in the file is Dec 1995). RedHat bought Cygnus Solutions
>(which was a shop for commercial support for GNU software, especially
>GCC ports to obscure and new platforms), which did the original Cygwin
work.
>
>Anyone at RedHat from the original Cygwin team (the last warriors of the
>(in)famous "Beta 20" :-)?) wanna answer this?
>
>There's an interesting line in the early changelogs:
>
> Release Beta 8
> [...]
> Much nicer way of describing paths, eg //c/foo is c:\foo.
>
>Suggests that the early goal *was* to provide a POSIX-y view, and the
>exposing of Windows paths was added as a convenience..
Bingo! I didn't start using Cygwin until B13 but that's always been my
understanding of the goals for Cygwin. POSIX/Unix compatibility first,
Windows conveniences where it doesn't inhibit the former. Perhaps the
early maintainers of Cygwin might have a different view but this is
definitely in-line with the original internal (Cygnus) goals of an
environment for Windows which could be used to port the GNU Pro product
suite.
I swore I wasn't going to step into the middle of this discussion! ;-)
Oh well.
Larry
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