Original Message: ----------------- >From: Shankar Unni [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 10:30:23 -0800 >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
