On 8 Jan 2002 at 19:14, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 05:29:14PM -0500, Soren Andersen wrote:
> >This lack of sponsorship maybe is also part of the noted tendency for
> >minGW priciple persons to manifest some, uhh, let's say testiness.
>
> I've been reading the mingw mailing lists for a while and I really don't see
> anything like this. Most of the replies are very courteous.
Of course they are. I never meant to suggest otherwise. But sometimes...
> They don't seem to have anyone like me, for instance. :-)
I don't know what to make of that, precisely. It doesn't seem to me that
you manifest particularly obnoxious behavior.
> >I've seen all this from certain people involved in minGW. Overall,
> >though, its an amazing thing that minGW even exists, and has
> >accomplished as much as it as.
>
> I really don't see very much of this at all. I'm surprised to see this
> observation.
Well, everyone experiences different things. That is a large general truth
about life in all sorts of realms, far beyond "just online" or "just among
hackers on mailing lists".
But specifically in reply, Chris, since I was, I thought, VERY careful to
preface and intersperse all my comments with things like "I don't mean to
dis anyone at minGW," I hope that somehow an overly broad and vague and
erronious impression isn't created by this, your response, which seems much
more "concerned [as in "worried"] than I feel would be warranted by a
reading of my message that accurately grasped my intent (which was first of
all to praise cygwin).
> >One thing that is pretty clear to me is that there is no one person,
> >aside maybe from Mumit Khan, who can legitimately present him/herself
> >as "speaking for" minGW. I think that needs to be acknowledged if
> >there's been some impression that "minGW is criticizing cygwin". minGW is
> >first and foremost a free-for-all, a collaborative exercize that moves
> >forward by fits and starts. In any such assemblage of personalities there
> >are bound to be some outspoken individuals (no sh__:-) who express
> >frustrations they are having in a way that isn't echoed by more silent
> >participants.
> There is a group of core MingGW maintainers, or at least that's what I
> understand.
> A couple of the MinGW maintainers have actually indicated
> that they still use cygwin for building their compiler tools.
Yes, AFAIK that is true, and is another discussion I'd like to have
sometime.
> And, as may have been noted, the mingw web page is really not wrong.
> MinGW support in cygwin *is* flaky and we *have* talked about
> deprecating it.
I don't know much about that, relative to others here and "over there".
Since your involvement in cygwin (and this List) is continuous and daily
and mine is perforce sporadic, I can never authoritatively contest anything
you state regarding past statements and discussions. Nor do I see any need
to.
[note: OP wrote]
> >>From what I've seen, it looks like MinGW support in Cygwin GCC is
> >>up-to-date and better than ever before. So, I have no idea what the
> >>MinGW web site is referring to. Does anyone from Cygwin agree that
> >>MinGW support will be deprecated?
{snip}
[I wrote]
> >Hopefully this can all get resolved peacefully and harmoniously. The
> >one thing I hope is that the collective attitudes at minGW never get to the
> >point where people "over there" (some of whom are also "people over here")
> >have forgotten the debt of appreciation they owe to cygwin, for being the
> >historical predecessor and "host" that allowed them to come into existence,
> >if for nothing else.
[cgf:]
> There is no "over there".
Of course there is. If one refrains from placing inferred nuances into my
words, all that my words meant (like the words of the OP) is that there is
a minGW community, vaguely -- as you indicated, a core group of
maintainers, whom I have much respect for -- and that community has its own
Lists and sites (as cited by the OP). And maybe or maybe not (debatably)
its own collective prevailing attitudes.
> The MinGW maintainers are a friendly bunch. I scan the MinGW lists for
> cygwin issues and a number of them read the cygwin list as well.
As I believe I said?!?
> So, please don't invent any antipathy between our two groups.
Perhaps *you* individually saw my words as an attempt to do so, hopefully
that wasn't a widespread impression. I think going back and looking at the
msg of the OP is warrented if one is going to debate my intention any
further after I have made this reply. There is IMO a clear probability that
the OP's msg may be read by some people as evoking the sense that there's
controversy or disharmony between cygwin and minGW.
My message was addressed to that possibility, not to fan any flames but to
provide historical perspective to those who might be "catching up" -- as
there are always many newcomers to any special-interest discussion in this
large realm, be it "GNU" or "Apache" or "Mozilla" or whatever -- people who
weren't involved from the early inception stages and may be lacking in
knowledge of where things have come from and how they got here. I am a firm
believer in knowing as much history as possible; I believe that when people
know the past they can better attempt not to repeat the same mistakes over
and over again, among other benefits. I implicitly invite correction from
you or anyone if I mis-cite facts of a historical nature (as opposed to
reportage of personal experience, which is in a sense incontestable) ;
however I do not feel myself required by any sort of humility-virtue ethic
to silently submit to significantly misinterpreted readings of my
statements that infer meanings they were not intended to have.
> I have never seen anyone badmouth cygwin in the mingw mailing lists.
> In my opinion MinGW is a sister project and should be treated as such.
That's great. I have seen (newbie) posters to THIS List somewhat brusquely
(but not outside the "cultural-style" of such Lists as this and the
hundreds of others out there on the 'Net) told that minGW questions were OT
and won't be answered here. Perhaps that has contributed to a subconcious
impression *on my part* that cygwin folk were a little sick and tired of
minGW if they weren't actively involved in it themselves. That's all.
> gcc -mno-cygwin isn't going anywhere. I somtimes speculate that we will be
> deprecating it but since this switch is required to build some things in the
> 'winsup hierarchy' we really can't do that.
>
> I've also speculated that gcc -mno-cygwin should just run a mingw cross
> compiler but that is rather infeasible, too. It means that if you are
> building the winsup hierarchy from scratch you have to somehow also build a
> completely separate compiler and linker. There is no way that I even want
> to imagine the Makefile nightmare necessary to accomplish that.
>
> So, what is needed is someone to fix gcc, ld, and whatever to do the right
> thing. Barring that, gcc -mno-cygwin will remain relatively stagnant.
>
> cgf
Thanks, and I hope that readers for whom my discussion herein of dialogue
itself -- and 'feelings,' 'motives,' and 'attitudes' and so forth that
accompanies it -- is "objectionable," will just have the self-possessed
good sense to ignore my messages if they make them unmanageably
uncomfortable, rather than knee-jerking in reaction. What I mean is, I've
noticed that some people on technical Lists can't tell reasonable but
difficult attempts at dialogue and reaching understanding across mutual
comprehension barriers, from "flames" or
"trolling" -- an unfortunate lack-of-wisdom handicap but one that belongs
to the people it belongs to, not to
me. I am not trying to make trouble, I simply find based on life-experience
that it is valuable to pay some
attention to dialogue and how it is carried out as an issue in itself,
rather than just always react by killfiling
people or responding with brusque criticisms and put-downs (which are the
verbal moral equivalent of bombs
dropped from aircraft). It is my observation that many Free (not Free
Beer...) software communities are
slowed down in the hurdles they can overcome because of handicaps in
communication outside their group
(between their group and others). If I have an agenda it might be said that
it is to get people to see that there
is room for improvement in dialogue skills itself and that this can yield
great rewards. But I realize that many people cannot hear me and will just
get pissed-off, in some cases, at the lengthy or non-technical, humanistic
nature of what I am trying to express.
Best,
Soren Andersen
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