Mail Archives: cygwin/2003/02/04/21:48:15
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:31:43PM -0500, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> Now, hold on there, no need to jump the gun. I'm not what you may call "a
> definitive expert on Cygwin licensing". In fact, whatever that page says
> surely overrides what I said earlier.
Okkay...that's what I'd been relying on, and hearing that it wasn't true
after all was a shock. I'm happy to hear that my original understanding was
correct.
> Remember that linking against some version of libcygwin.a doesn't mean you
> have to keep to the corresponding version of cygwin1.dll. Since it's
> loaded dynamically, all you need is for the functions you need to be
> present in the new DLL. This is generally the case.
Present *and* working the same or compatibly. Unfortunately, we've found
that that's not the case.
> Oh. In that case, yes, you'll either need to distribute the cygwin1.dll
> yourself (and make the source available somewhere) or have the users
> install the required packages via setup. I assumed you were asking about
> the latter, hence the answer. The "hercules" package that I was talking
> about doesn't actually have to contain anything except the dependences (or
> it could contain a post-install script that would install Hercules from a
> separately downloaded .ZIP/.EXE or configure an already installed one).
Well, if there was an easy way to get setup to do the job, that would be
okkay (as long as I could include setup and the necessary control files in
the Hercules .ZIP). It sounds like there's not.
> > In general, when cygwin1.dll changes, Hercules breaks.
> Why?
I wish I knew. In general, though, Hercules seems to be a stress test for
Cygwin, and we've had lots of folks have trouble by installing later
versions fo the DLL than Hercules was built with. There's also a bug right
now that causes allocation of three times as much memory as Hercules
actually calls for. (I believe that one's already been reported; it really
hits Hercules hard, though, as it's not uncommon to have Hercules allocate
256 MB of memory for the emulated system's central storage, and a 768 MB
allocation will drive most Windows boxes to their knees.) When that one gets
fixed, I'm expecting to have to update my copy of Cygwin, then distribute
updated Hercules binaries - which will mean updating the copy of cygwin1.dll
needed, which will mean either adding another version of the source (all N
megabytes of it), or else pointing people to the Cygwin site...
Maybe a better idea is to have a setup option that installs needed DLLs
*only*, with no shell, no utility programs, etcetera.
> Sorry to hear that. AFAIK, you do have to provide sources for the
> cygwin1.dll that you distribute.
Damn. You know, this is one reason people stay away from the GPL...
(I can go on for hours, and there are undoubtedly folks here who have heard
me do it. Anyone who would like to get the whole rant is invited to contact
me off-list.)
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