Re: cygport limitations (was: Adding MSYS functionality to Cygwin)

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please at cygwin dot com>]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 04:03:46PM -0400, Andrew Schulman wrote:
>>On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 09:49:34AM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>>On Jun 20 22:38, Andrew Schulman wrote:
>>>>>If every maintainer would use cygport, it would allow us to change the
>>>>>build method to one along the lines of most Linux distros.  In Linux
>>>>>distros, the maintainer provides only the spec file and the source
>>>>>archive.  The actual build for all supported platforms could be done on
>>>>>a machine which creates the distro from there.
>>>>
>>>>That would be cool.  Let's do it!
>>>
>>>Uhm, that was a projection into the ideal future.  No provisions have
>>>been made yet.  We need to set up a central repository like Yaakov's
>>>cygwinports git repo and a central build mechanism.  The first we can
>>>probably shamelessly copy from Yaakov and set up over the next few
>>>months, the second needs a bit of hacking.
>>
>>I'm not sure if this reminder is needed but, I'm not switching to
>>cygport and I believe there are also a couple of other people using
>>non-cygport packagers as well.
>
>I guess there will always be some maintainers who don't want to use
>cygport, but I don't think that should be a reason to keep all of the
>rest of us from moving from the current labor-intensive manual build
>process, to a more labor-efficient automated process.

You've introduced a false dilemma.  There is no reason to assume that
any build system will be so limited as to be able to only run one type
of build mechanism.  The one that I use could easily be dropped into
any automated build.

Also, while I'm happy to help set up some kind of central repository,
please don't anyone assume that sourceware will be used to build
packages.  That is not an appropriate use of the system.  So, someone
(Red Hat?) would have to offer up a system to build everything.

I've said repeatedly that I'd like to fix the current upload mechanism
that we use for Cygwin.  I've tried a couple of different mechanisms but
neither was really good enough.

>For packages that don't work well with cygport, maybe it would be
>worthwhile to still support the current manual upload method.  The
>number of those packages would apparently be small.  But if a
>maintainer just doesn't want to use cygport, then I think we should ask
>whether the project should spend its resources accomodating that
>preference.

I don't see any reason to adopt that harsh a stance but again: false
dilemma...

cgf

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