Enrico Forestieri wrote:
On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 02:27:50PM +0200, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
Enrico Forestieri a écrit :
I am more radical than Abdel and use all cygwin tools to build
a native win32 version of LyX.
I may well join you in the revolution Enrico ;-) And I may go even
further, just use the cygwin compiler, no mingw at all and no
-mno-cygwin option. I would just like to know if going this route will
necessitate a cygwin installation for the user or not. If it is just a
matter of distributing cygwin.dll then this is the way to go. If the
user have to install cygwin, I guess not.
The point is that LyX substantially is a *nix application and cygwin
offers all the needed infrastructure. So, you already have libiconv,
libaspell, python and so on. So why do not require installing cygwin
with the minimum set of applications needed for LyX? It is even simpler
than requiring to install everything separately. You don't need an
installer as cygwin already provides one (setup.exe). I only have to
write a setup.ini describing the packages and I am done. I can write
pre-remove and post-install scripts in sh syntax, I have tools to access
the windows registry from a script, and I stop here because I could
continue almost forever.
Do you mean by using this setup.ini that LyX could be installed
as easily as Uwe's AllinOne Installer? Would it automatically
append the LyX dependencies to Cygwin's setup.exe procedure?
It requires a great deal of energy to displace a species which
occupies an evolutionary niche by a new species, even if that
new species is better adapted. Linux will never replace Windows
and LyX will never replace Word. LyX is going to serve the more
technically competent users, not corporate secretaries.
Cygwin uses Tetex which has some structural advantages to Miktex
or the TexLive/ProText. Thanks for fixing the socket code which
also has more appeal to an advanced user. Using Cygwin for LyX
collects some more users by broadening the channel of approach
as an addition to native LyXwin, not a replacement. It is helpful
to those who prefer Linux but are forced to work in a Windows
environment. Cygwin is easy to install (if a bit primitive) and
easy to use if one is migrating from Linux as a competent user;
most amateur Windows users will never migrate to Linux or Cygwin.
But why not build as many roads to Rome as is feasible?
Pleased with the CygLyX achievement,
Stephen
