Larry: > but adding work-arounds to Cygwin for other people's bugs just makes Cygwin fragile and bloated. Agreed, and understood, from a programmer's point of view.
> The first step in the process is very often to report the problem to the provider of the software. ... and correctly diagnosing which software is responsible is often a problem that exceeds most end users. - As pointed out in the "CygX Run" thread, M$ is usually to blame. - If the problem is RAM available to cygwin (no example to point to), that's a user-configuration problem. - In the case of the SFX zip file, my opinion is that the creator of the zip should "really" learn to span. There is no reason to transmit/copy-move a compressed file of more than 20M when "spanning" is available... and DOSRAR will run effectively under cygwin (as I pointed out, copying it to ~ or ~/bin, and chmod 555 DOSRAR.EXE). I'm so sorry that RAR won't "play nice" with cygwin, but it "plays nice" with Windows, Linux, Unix, and other operating systems. cygwin is a Windows tool, like dBase, Rbase, RAR and so many others. Cygwin (as a Windows shell) should be able to spawn a Windows task to run outside of the domain of cygwin, monitor the Windows task, allow the Windows task to run freely in Windows according to Windows rules, and receive a reported status back (by default) to cygwin from Windows. After all, Bash can call/run/spawn csh and ksh and zsh scripts and receive a status. Cygwin is a Windows shell, so it should behave like a shell. Just my two cents worth. :) > For this issue, that would mean reporting it to MS... Not to my way of thinking. ZIP SFX is the root of the problem. Not Zip, Not Windows, Zip SFX without Spanning. I would have to do some more research with the users before deciding who the issue should be reported to. Hypothetical case-in-point, if the SFX was created on a Mac, then there would be no way that a MAC SFX would execute on a PC (but it should unzip). While I understand how SFX files are convenient, they immediately limit themselves by OS. Again, I would suggest to the original poster (and I believe I did, in a round-about way) that they request their sender to resend the file using spanning. For the future, I would suggest that the original poster implement a new policy that they will not accept a single file greater than 20M, and that all filesets sent must contain at minimum an md5 file (to verify the rec'v'd file's validity) and at most include an associated 10% PAR set, and that received files will be merged together if the associated PAR files can verify/rebuild the large file. Otherwise, the whole transmitted set is to be considerred corrupt, just like they want to consider the SFX file that they originally brought to the list's attention. It will make file transfer more secure/verifiable. Again, that's my two cent worth. Peace, Barry Smith -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Larry Hall (Cygwin) Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 3:13 PM To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: [OT] polite response to a polite reponse... On 09/23/2008, Barry Smith at SourceLink wrote: > > ... but running a simple user program should not crash it. That > > > doesn't mean that there it is impossible for a simple user program > > > to crash it but if Windows crashes, it's a serious Windows bug not > > > a program bug. > That is just a fancy way of passing the buck. > A former president coined the phrase "The buck stops here." There are certain extremes where this has to apply but adding work-arounds to Cygwin for other people's bugs just makes Cygwin fragile and bloated. In general the policy for Cygwin is to fix the problem at the source in any case possible. This holds true for any software whether it's free (as in beer and/or speech) or not. The first step in the process is very often to report the problem to the provider of the software. For this issue, that would mean reporting it to MS, which the OP in the other thread said he would do. It wouldn't hurt to follow-up on that, if you're game. -- Larry Hall http://www.rfk.com RFK Partners, Inc. (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office 216 Dalton Rd. (508) 893-9889 - FAX Holliston, MA 01746 _____________________________________________________________________ A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email? -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
