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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 12:46:36 -0400
To: Earnie Boyd <Cygwin-Apps AT cygwin DOT com>
From: "Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)" <lhall AT rfk DOT com>
Subject: Re: ITP: netpbm
Cc: Earnie Boyd <Cygwin-Apps AT cygwin DOT com>
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At 11:51 AM 4/29/2002, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>"Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)" wrote:
> > 
> > At 07:44 AM 4/29/2002, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>-8<-
> > The point is, the extra path walks are
> > >expensive.
> > 
> > Quite true.  But I would say that Corinna's suggestion, from a strict
> > technical perspective, makes netpbm in a different bin directory usable
> > 'out-of-the-box' under Cygwin.  If netpbm were going to be put in it's
> > own bin directory, I would say that adding files like the ones Corinna
> > suggests is an absolute requirement.
> > 
>
>Yes, but you missed the point.
>
>Go ahead, add something to the end of your PATH and execute it with
>strace.  Then see how many times the pathing routines are called to
>search for a symlink.  It's once for each directory listed in PATH and I
>mean each directory listed in the path name of the path list (E.G.: a
>PATH of /usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin has six directories in it).  And if
>someone has a symlink in PATH, it's called again to see if the file
>pointed to by the symlink is a symlink.  Note, the coding is necessary
>for symlink simulation, but it's slows down time it takes to find the
>binary file to exec.  Keep the binaries to the front of the PATH and put
>them in /bin.


Thanks for this explanation.  It's good to have this information for the 
email archives.  Also, I wasn't disagreeing with the point you were
making.  Personally, I think it is yet another reason not to split binaries
out into separate directories without good reason.  But this is a technical
issue.  My point was that *if* someone were planning to put binaries of 
netpbm or any other package in it's own bin directory, something like 
Corinna's suggestion is needed to make it usable in Cygwin by anyone right 
after installation.  Without something like that, the installation is broken 
and this list gets flooded with questions about why the package doesn't work.
So Corinna's suggestion addresses this issue but not yours.  They are two 
separate issues, both of which have been discussed in this thread.  From 
a sanity perspective, I'm more concerned about making sure any new approach
to packaging doesn't confuse users and overwhelm the Cygwin list.  
Performance only falls into that category for me if the affect is so drastic
that a good subset of users complain.  Since it wasn't obvious to me that 
Corinna's suggestion automatically creates that situation, I'm not as 
concerned about it, though I do acknowledge it.  But I think there's some 
consensus that extra bin directories is "bad" for any of a number of 
reasons, including the issue of performance, so I don't think anyone will 
be pushing the idea at this point.  Though maybe I'm wrong... ;-)


Larry Hall                              lhall AT rfk DOT com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      http://www.rfk.com
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
Holliston, MA 01746                     (508) 893-9889 - FAX