From:	noer AT cygnus DOT com (Geoffrey Noer)
Subject:	Re: Outstanding problems in B19?
3 Feb 1998 15:32:02 -0800 :
Message-ID:	<199802032306.PAA01669.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@rtl.cygnus.com>
References:	<EntnJF DOT 6Bt AT bbc DOT com>
Reply-To:	cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com
To:	cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> 
> It looks like B19 will probably be released with some outstanding problems.
> Possibly these are not issues to Cygnus customers but many of them crop
> up once a day on the mailing list.

Very true.  But b18 is too old.  At this point, I'd like to get b19
out the door and then try to get these things dealt with in b20.
b20 will also include egcs as the compiler of choice.  (Once b19 is
out, it will also be easier to try to get the Net community to be
involved in fixing some of them).

All of your points are valid.  Comments on a few:

[...]
> 4)  Is it easier to build .dlls with B19 than it was with B18?

Building dlls isn't going to be easy until dlltool is integrated into
ld and that's going to be hard.  :-(  So, no, maybe some bug fixes
will help a bit but b19 won't help a lot here.

> 5)  Is there going to be an automated way to set all the correct environment
>     variables so that gcc will work "out of the box" or does it already?
>     It's been so long that I can't remember.

We have plans to fix this but they haven't been implemented yet.
Basically, the gcc driver needs to be changed so it searches relative
paths if GCC_EXEC_PREFIX isn't set.

> 6)  If Sergey's patch to copy the data section of .dlls is not incorporated
>     then there will be issues with some ported X programs, I believe.

It *might* be possible to get that patch in.  Philippe sent an
assignment form to me a week ago but I haven't received it yet.

> 7)  Is it possible to link MSVC objects using ld?  There was a patch posted
>     to the mailing list recently that applied cleanly over a recent GAS
>     snapshot that ostensibly allowed this.

It should be but this hasn't been tested heavily.

> 8)  Is ash or bash going to be distributed as /bin/sh?

Now that bash is no longer SEGVing, b19 will just include bash as sh.
The version you gave me has some POSIX.2 compatibility problems and I
haven't had time to finish porting the newest NetBSD one yet.  :-(

> 9)  Will less and/or man be distributed?  That's another hot button.

No. *sigh*

> 10) Will inetd, telnetd, et. al. be available somewhere?

I'm hoping Sergey will be able to update the package he's made
available for Coolview.

-- 
Geoffrey Noer
noer AT cygnus DOT com

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