Re: When will cygwin ever be stable?

[Earnie Boyd <earnie_boyd at yahoo dot com>]

egor duda wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Tuesday, 01 May, 2001 Andy Piper andyp@bea.com wrote:
> 
> >>What does "the headers change the whole time" mean?  What specifically
> 
> AP> It means that each time I install a new version of w32api or the mingw
> AP> one's I have to fix XEmacs compilation in some way or other.
> 
> >>caused you problems?  Was it the move of headers to /usr/include/w32api?
> 
> AP> That didn't help. My problem is not whether this was a good or bad thing to
> AP> do, but rather that it changed again (remember the move to the new headers
> AP> etc?)
> 
> i wonder if it was my changes to w32api that change _ANONYMOUS_*
> semantics? they surely can break applications that include headers
> individually without including <windows.h> first. since you didn't
> state yet what exactly the problem with headers was, i can only guess.
> if some application included individual w32api headers without
> <windows.h>, i think it's wrong. i think you understand that api
> writer should make some assumptions about how this api will be used
> and act accordingly. "always include windows.h" is, i think, quite
> logical assumption. and, speaking of this specific change, it was made
> to not break programs that do include windows.h
> 

Yes, you should always `#include <windows.h>' and never the pieces.  You
can limit some of the pieces from being included by `#define
WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN prior to the inclusion of windows.h.

> i think you understand that "don't change it in any way" is a bit,
> uhm, unrealistic attitude.
> 

Definitely.

> i wholeheartedly agree that lots of cygwin users will benefit from
> rock-stable cygwin. the main question is "what cygwin team should do
> for this?" don't change anything? this won't make things stable.
> maintain "stable" and "development" branches? well, perhaps somebody
> will be doing this, but the question of "should we merge w32api
> changes from devel branch to the stable one, and if we should, then
> when?" is still unanswered.
> 

What is "stable"?  What is "development"?  IMO, there is the "released"
branch and the "unreleased" branch and both branches can be under
development.  For Cygwin the released branch maintains no further
development and is frozen in time.  And the unreleased branch at times
may include feature improvements and additions or may be in a state of
"fix the bugs to the extent possible within a given time frame".

Earnie.

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